The train cradles its passengers in andante. Cadences within train’s metallic walls punctuated by repeated beats from locomotive wheels on rail tracks. This repeating cadence fills us and from it comes the sufferable void. Sitting or sleeping transcends into a creative act, where we contort our postures in vain to endure the long journey.

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However, sights of nature from our windows relieve us from our daily burdens, of the invasive stream of choices or judgements, of the omnipresent mediascape’s aesthetic anaesthetics that assist in making men’s life bearable. In compensation for this isolation, the train passengers engage in mutual conversations. Some conversed with the endless green that passes by through the window. Or some, like myself, have internal conversations. Swaying thoughts pervades in isolation.

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This Sri Lanka’s Landline Railway, dubbed by various mediascapes to be among or ‘the’ most beautiful railway routes contributes to the novelty of the already established geopolitical and geocultural beauty of The ‘Pearl of the Indian Ocean’. I embarked on a train that departed Colombo for Ella. It seems noteworthy that it departs from Colombo’s train station, considered among the nation’s epitome colonial architecture relic. Contrastingly, as the train ascended to the highlands the surroundings became increasingly ‘Sri Lankan’. Prompted by this transition it seems sensible to consider the nation’s colonized history.

 

This network of trains was once the prime mode of logistics for transporting tea. However, the present increased network of organized roads usurped this mandate from the rail. Instead, they are now domesticated into a public commodity. At first glance, it seems strange that the Ceylonese hark no visible hatred or contempt for the rail’s dark, unpalatable colonial past. Approximately 3000 native labourers died of malaria or cholera during the network’s construction. The train network’s present utility is perhaps a redemptive measure of its existence. Or perhaps, the prime directive among Ceylonese, refreshingly, seems to not dwell in mere reprisals.   

 

Just as other citizens within global developing countries, the Ceylonese are caught within an unprecedented atmosphere of modernity. For them, this peculiarity is amplified by its revolutions within the span of merely two decades. In contrast of this rapidity, the following South East Asian countries’ undergo a similar range of modernizations through more forgiving timespans; with Malaysia and Singapore at the approximates of five decades, while Vietnam and Cambodia at four. To clarify, Sri Lanka’s Civil war ended in 2009, while in 2015 its people voted for increased democracy. In other words, this led to two critical shifts, firstly, its communities rapidly formed into culturally homogenized societies as efforts for peace commences post-civil war. Secondly, the new struggle of nationhood and nationalisms have its connotations morphed, with economic sustenance and global meritocracy superseding ethnonationalism and religious fundamentalism.

 

What I meant by the previous reflection is the wonders and necessities of capitalism seems to have thrived over ethnic or religious disputes. This is even more reflected as Sri Lankan’s imagined communities sat in groups, each either partaking in beautifully mundane banters or retrospections while basking in the sights of the green landscapes. It is profound that such a scene is impossible merely decades back. In addition, irregularly placed among them but ubiquitously delighting with similar leisure, are international tourists. Liberatingly, the fragile, once exclusive imagined communities inhabiting these lands now encounter other external imagined worlds. Together, they congregate peacefully, communally, within the train’s metallic walls, each retreating to individual spheres of conversations.

 

This encounter within shared train carriage spaces also signifies Sri Lanka to be a new welcomed participant within the current global economy. With hindsight, this includes its participation in global issues, concerns, political inadequacies, along with contradicting ideologies. Concurrently, as mediascapes featuring Sri Lanka’s cultural reproductions and landscapes now proliferate the globe as a prime touristic destination, paradoxically, in turn, the Ceylonese’s also have rapid access to other nations or globally induced mediascapes.

 

These strips of realities resonate within every Ceylonese’s ebb and flow, undiscriminating of social classes. Or we could provisionally theorize, these contrasting, global realities resonate more profoundly among the middle to lower social classes. New seemingly reachable options prod once distilled ideologies, and from it birth new desirable outcomes. Those idealized worlds now become intolerable since the possibility of achieving them exists, but are denied due to social or geographical circumstances. The ramifications to this unbalancing of its culturally grounded pre-sovereignty could only be pre-emptively deduced within the next few decades. It is perhaps logical to additionally predict future complex tensions from its homogenized communities as their cultural veracity faces subtle but imminent threats (or revelations) from globalizing heterogenization.   

   

My thoughts were interrupted when sudden combined gasps of all passengers unanimously appreciating the view of beautiful tea plantations. Behold and humbled by such sights, we witnessed the changes of geography to the rising altitude along with its gradual effects upon the morphing fauna. Then came the fog, and thus we can judge the absenteeism of man, none of his carvings upon landscapes, none of his indecorous interferences. This prompts the realization, that nature is indeed unmanageable. It thrives on accidentals, an ecosystem purely of chance. Perhaps this new ecosystem of congregated humanities may thrive similarly.