Sri Lanka crisis: Daily heartbreak of life in a country gone bankrupt

Image source, EPA

You're losing before you get up.

Power cuts that run late into the night steal hours of sleep as the fans don't work, and whole families wake up because they couldn't sleep after the country went bankrupt and ran out of fuel.

There are long days to be lived, work days to be run, daily essentials to be bought at twice the price they had been last month.

You are starting more broken than you were a week ago.

The battle to find transport beckons once you've had breakfast, eating less than you used to or nothing at all.

In the cities, fuel is hard to come by and can take a long time to fill up.

Tuk-tuk drivers are forced to spend days lining up before they can run hires again for 48 hours before they are forced to rejoin the queue.

Middle- and upper-class people used to bring meal packets and soft drinks for people waiting in line.

Even largesse from the moneyed has been in short supply because of the sky-rocketing cost of food, cooking gas, clothes, transport, and even what electricity the state will allow you to have.

The simplest of meals have begun to be prepared by families around wood fire stoves.

Dhal has become a luxury in South Asia. What's the matter with meat? The price was three times what it used to be. Don't even think about it.

It used to be cheap to buy fresh fish. There is no diesel in the water. Hotels and restaurants are out of reach for the fishermen that can go out and sell their catch.

• Sri Lanka is an island nation off southern India: It won independence from British rule in 1948. Three ethnic groups - Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim - make up 99% of the country's 22 million population.
• One family of brothers has dominated for years: Mahindra Rajapaksa became a hero among the majority Sinhalese in 2009 when his government defeated Tamil separatist rebels after years of bitter and bloody civil war. His brother Gotabaya, who was defence secretary at the time, is now president.
• Now an economic crisis has led to fury on the streets: Soaring inflation has meant some foods, medication and fuel are in short supply, there are rolling blackouts and ordinary people have taken to the streets in anger with many blaming the Rajapaksa family and their government for the situation.

Most of the children in Sri Lanka have been forced to eat a diet with almost no meat or dairy products. This is a crisis that is hitting on all levels.

Children's brains, their organs, their muscles, their bones, are all required. Most of the milk powder is imported.

There is a humanitarian crisis. The crisis has been going on for a long time here.

People who can find rides usually commute on trains and buses.

The young men are on the footboards and the crowd is inside.

Sri Lanka has failed to invest in its public transport for decades, while the island's wealthier residents continue to complain about the indiscipline of bus and trishaw drivers.

The nation has been brought to its knees by this perceived disdain for regular people from both the political and financial elite. The lower-middle and working classes are the hardest hit by the economic downturn.

The function of private hospitals is not as good as it used to be. In North Central Anuradhapura, a 16-year old boy who had been bitten by a snake died as his father rushed from pharmacy to pharmacy to get the anti-venom he needed.

Many life-saving medicines can no longer be paid for by the healthcare sector. In May, a two-day-old baby died after her parents couldn't find a ride to the hospital.

As economists have pointed out, the sweeping tax cuts of 2019: lobbying for and cheered on by many corporate and professional groups, helped bring the nation to this brink

Some of the fuel on the black market can be used to run larger private vehicles and electricity generators.

Lower down the economic ladder, people attempt to buy bicycles to make trips into work, but the exchange rate makes it hard to get a bike.

The power cuts that caused the protests in March had been the worst. The nation was exhausted in the hottest weeks of the year because of the 13-hour daily power failures.

The president lives in the eastern suburb of Mirihana, and a crowd of thousands descended on it.

This was the most intense of all the demonstrations that have taken place over the last year. A man wearing a motorcycle helmet made a speech railing against the political forces, clergy and media that had delivered the nation into the hands of what was now widely perceived as the most self-serving and incompetent government here in generations.

The man was beaten brutally by the police and arrested along with many other people.

Even after 26 years of civil war, the island has never had a president as close to the military as Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

In the past few months, the south has learned what northerners have known for a long time: dissent is often met with violence.

In recent months largely peaceful protesters have had live rounds shot into their midst and tear gasindiscriminately fired at crowds in which small children were present. The mildest shows of displeasure have been met with violence.

Police say some officers suffered injuries when stones were thrown, but as protesters have lost lives or are in the hospital, the police response has been viewed as disproportionate.

Politicians use social media to ask for change while offering sympathy. This has mostly made people angry. Is it not the politicians who lead us here?

While nationwide protests have called for the removal of the president and his cohort, they remain obstinately in place, their perceived disdain for the public's will can be seen in the backroom deals that poison the island's politics.

The policies the leaders put in place are met with a lot of criticism because they insist that only they can lift the island out again.

There is a push to send more Sri Lankans overseas to work as housemaids, drivers and mechanics in the Middle East with the expectation that they will send their earnings back home.

PoorSriLankans with no hope of finding local employment are forced to leave their families for nations in which they have few protections and little agency in order to find work. The vampire state was described by an anthropologist online.

You're drained by the evening in the crisis. Due to the lack of petrol and diesel, the everyday functioning of a workplace has become a constant source of crises, with supply chains having broken down, most potential customers having refused to spend on anything but essentials, and staff failing to show up.

You survive on lighter evening meals with each passing week, unable to buy enough food for your home, unable to give your parents their medication, or your children the education they deserve, because of late-night power cuts.

There is no fuel to transport schools. The classes are online for three years in a row.

The government continually fails to deliver what it's promised, relatives and neighbours call to ask for money you don't have to spare, and the police and military bear down on what little hope remains.

A mother and her two children jumped into a river.

On a daily basis, a new heartbreak.

An award-winning author and journalist is based in Sri Lankan.