As Sri Lankans reel under their country’s worst economic crisis in decades, their families 1,500 km away in Bengaluru are gripped with concern.
They are intently following the news about the shortage of fuel, food and medicines, 10-hour power cuts, and the cry for financial assistance.
Corporate trainer Anjana Samuel’s sister lives in the capital city of Colombo, where, she has learnt, the situation is slightly better than in the rural pockets. “If the situation worsens, I have told my sister to move to Bengaluru,” she says.
The Bannerghatta Road resident says the economy started plummeting in February, weeks before the news made it to the headlines. Perhaps the signs were always there, she says looking back at her vacation to Sri Lanka last Christmas. “The value of the Sri Lankan rupee had gone down. There were fewer tourists and chartered flights. The airfares were high. But all the blame was put on the pandemic,” she says.
Passport clamour
Hairdresser and trainer Dinesh Kumar, 34, has heard from his sister in Colombo that “a thousand passport applications” are pouring in daily as people are trying to migrate out of Sri Lanka.
He can empathise, for he decided to leave the country at the age of 18 in pursuit of a good life, and there have been “many other educated people like me, doctors and engineers included.”
“Our economic crisis is visible to the world right now but it is not new to us. We have lived more than 25 years through the civil war. Every time there was a bomb blast, the price of petrol would go up and strikes would follow. As political parties changed, we would face a shortage of cooking (gas) every month. Then the Easter bombings took place followed by the pandemic,” says Dinesh, who runs a salon in Indiranagar. Islamists targeted three churches in Sri Lanka in 2019, in attacks that killed 249 and came to be called the Easter bombings. Earlier, the nation was also ravaged by a tsunami in 2004.
His people, he says, are now standing in 2 km queues for fuel, and rations are dearer than ever before. “They want to earn enough to get through a day,” he says of their state of mind.
Struggles don’t cease
Dharinya Ganesharaja was born at the peak of the civil war in 1997. At age eight, she saw a bomb explode near her home in Colombo.
“I have never seen a normal Sri Lanka,” says Dharinya, who did her undergraduate studies at a prominent college in Bengaluru in 2019 and moved back to Colombo to work as a communications officer with a think-tank.
Now she is clear she wants to pursue her career outside Sri Lanka. “Many youngsters are trying to migrate to Canada and Australia but they are concerned about leaving their parents behind,” says the 24-year-old.
Their career plans are fraught with challenges. “My masters course in the UK starts in September. I called up a local bank to reserve some forex. They turned down the request, saying they weren’t confident if Sri Lanka’s economic situation would get better.”
A friend, she adds, could not afford a flight ticket to the UK because the Sri Lankan rupee has weakened drastically. “His friend booked him a ticket from the UK,” she says.
Nobody is having it easy — students, homemakers, salaried professionals, daily-wage workers, people in villages and cities, she says.
“I am doing two jobs… I plan to sleep during the power cuts and work when the power is back… My father lives four hours away. He hasn’t returned in two months because of the fuel shortage,” she says in quick succession.
Many staying put
Despite the desperate times, Sheryne John, who teaches mathematics at a college in Koramangala, says her relatives in Colombo are not looking to pack their bags and leave the country. “They just want other countries to help out,” she says. “Our past has made most of us Sri Lankans resilient. We don’t crib and whine. We work harder and carry on,” says Dharinya.
Bengalureans in Sri Lanka
Priyanka Rajwar, a sales and marketing professional, flew to Sri Lanka for a week-long family holiday in the thick of the crisis last Saturday.The thought that she was seeking to visit the country when its people were struggling for food and fuel did worry her. But she went ahead knowing that she was supporting their key industry, tourism. “We decided to leave more tips on the go, and also not haggle,” she says.
The only advice she was given before she boarded the flight was to book cabs for long-distance travel in advance.
When she got there, she planned dinners in standalone restaurants, keeping in mind the power-cut schedules.
Couple Siddhartha Roy and Deena Rodrigues, both in brand marketing, moved to Sri Lanka a few months ago. “Sri Lankans are worried, angry and upset but they are also putting pressure on the authorities to take adequate measures. Sri Lanka has bounced back from crises every time,” Deena speaks of the “sentiment” on the ground. While she has read reports of panic hoarding, she has also heard instances of people sharing essential resources with one another.