A light rain had begun to fall, so a girl in her school uniform stood under the eaves of a house

Girl waiting for bus — Girl waiting for a bus

In the old capital of Kandy, Sri Lanka, a schoolgirl was standing beneath the eaves of a roadside house. Dressed in a crisp white uniform, she held her textbooks to her chest and gazed absently down the road. A light tropical rain had begun to fall, and she seemed to have taken shelter under the old tiled roof to keep from getting wet. Her blouse, skirt, socks, and sneakers were all an immaculate white—so bright that, under the dim southern sky, she seemed almost to glow.

At her collar was a neatly knotted regimental-striped tie, no doubt the mark of her school. I’d heard that Sri Lankan schools had inherited the British fondness for uniforms, and that white, especially for girls, was meant to signify purity and sincerity. But judging from her expression, it was not virtue that occupied her thoughts, but boredom—and perhaps a trace of unease.

The bus showed no sign of coming. In these parts, timetables are a kind of polite fiction; the bus arrives when it does, or not at all. The girl folded her arms and looked down at the muddy ground, waiting for the rain to stop. Behind her, the roof tiles were cracked and sagging, as if ready to collapse at any moment, yet she seemed entirely unconcerned. In a country where time drifts as lazily as the clouds, even waiting in the rain can feel like part of the lesson.

Kandy on Google Map

Comment via

日本語