How I’ve learned to over-react as Sri Lanka collapses — When COVID-19 hit we suddenly had to be paranoid about everything. Breathing. Going outside. Having supplies. I really thought things would get back to normal someday, but they haven’t. It’s just been wave after wave, not just COVID but compounding disasters. Sri Lanka avoided COVID once but then it got…

Fiction, I hope obviously — When Prasanna woke up on judgment day he immediately thought ‘Shit!’ and then cursed himself for cursing. In front of ‘him’ (which was a vague concept, his body was more of a shape-shifting caterpillar), in front of him were many lines, like a set of supermarket queues. But which one…

I never wanted to be some scribe of collapse, least of all for my own country — Ikeep opening browser tabs like tabs of Xanax. I do it for sedation but I just end up more aggravated. Everything is shit, everywhere. Reading anything is like fiddling with a canker sore. Checking if the pain is still there. It is. The worst is when the news spills out…

‘Food insecurity’ is just a fancy word for famine — Pandemic is just a fancy word for plague, and ‘food insecurity’ is just a fancy word for famine. Over 10 million people have died in a global plague and tens of millions more have already begun dying in famines. It’s already here. Today I was getting off the bus…

My country has (involuntarily) stopped importing fossil fuels — Sri Lanka has dramatically cut its fossil fuel emissions, completely involuntarily. We don’t use diesel, petrol, or natural gas simply because we can’t import any. We have no natural reserves and no credit to buy. The country has literally run out of gas. Transport For The Rich For a sense of what that’s like…

And how it’s coming for you — Capitalism has entirely collapsed in Sri Lanka, and the country is out of petrodollars and ergo out of petroleum. Cars snake round the city in giant petrol queues, like dinosaurs lining up at a vaporized watering hole after the asteroid. They don’t know it yet, but they’re extinct. …

What transport tells you about a city — When the bus stops I throw my kids up the steps. The old Ashok Leyland starts moving before I get in, but I’m not worried about them. A dozen hands immediately reach out for my babies, holding their unsteady bodies steady. Three people offer their seats. It is these times…

To satisfy the inflation gods, there must be blood — Obama’s Treasury Secretary Larry Summers recently said, “We need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation… or one year of 10% unemployment.” In response, here’s Brad Pitt in The Big Short: “You know what I hate about fucking banking it reduces people to numbers. Here’s a number. Every…

Just fine, thank you — I’m rich in Sri Lanka. Indirectly, but it’s one household. What I will detail here is honestly embarrassing and goes unspoken in polite company, but you should know how rich people are doing at this time of terrible suffering. We’re mostly fine, and it’s a crime. For a brief period…