Running on Empty

"We are now facing a far more serious situation beyond the mere shortages of fuel, gas, electricity and food,” Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said, speaking in Sinhala, mere days ago. “Our economy has faced a complete collapse.”

Every morning, we wake to a restless stirring.  If not the thump of bass. The line of tuk-tuks stretches in both directions, on both sides of the street, for as far as the eye can see. As a result, traffic must navigate a single lane, dodging the tuk-tuk drivers meandering aimlessly across the lane, seeking shade under the mango trees.

The crowd, so far, remains calm and accommodating, even smiling. When we open the gate or the garage door, they nod at their tuk in such a way as to ask if we want them to move it. We don't. We won't drive anywhere either, so no need to back the car out. The drivers cluster, doubtlessly exchanging gossip. When will the next bowser come? When it does arrive -- usually around 2:00 in the afternoon -- the news run does the line like an electric current. You know they're pumping when you see the drivers pushing their tuks down the street. 

Until it comes, they doze fitfully in the back of the tuk, folded in upon themselves in the back seat like origami, resting their head on a rolled up t-shirt, or the rough soles of feet sticking out from the vehicle at anatomically impossible angles. If awake, they listen to the incomprehensible babble of Sinhalese news or, more likely, the metronomic clip of a cricket match. You could walk down the line of tuks and hear the match the entire way, carrying from one phone to the next. 

In the next day or so the island will run out of fuel. What happens then? Supposedly, there is a tanker bobbing in the waves off shore but the government doesn't have enough money to pay for its contents.  There are no other shipments lined up behind it. An entire island, an entire nation, out of gas? Does anyone know? Or even care?

Elise and I walked to get a coffee this afternoon.  One of the few luxuries still afforded to us. On the way home we stopped at the store and filled our basket with tea cookies and crackers, dozens of packets we will distribute to those in line. It's nothing, a drop in the bucket, but it's all we can do and better than nothing. Make sure no one goes hungry or thirsty at least in those few meters of the queue outside our front door we can be responsible for. 

I wish I could add photos, to give some visual magnitude to the breadth and width of what is happening.  At the same time, it seems dehumanizing to do so. 

Lines

We waited for the bus, gathered near the front door, Sam about to launch into a necessary rehearsal of the speech the he would give later that day at school, when we heard the rise of commotion from outside.  Elise and I both sprung, leapt for the gate keys in a dish by the front door.  We unlocked the front gate.  It swung open, and we looked out on the street in front of our house.

A black purse lay on the pavement directly in front of our gate, one strap broken, the contents vomited out onto the pavement, a curious crow pecking at the purse's innards, searching for something in the lining of the bag, and tugging on the broken strap with its shiny, paper-mache beak.  Every house on both sides of us and across the street had spit out its inhabitants, disgorged them into the street, bleary-eyed and only barely dressed.  From the construction sites next door, shirtless men in dhotis glared down the street.  All eyes followed the trail of the assailant, though he was out of sight now.  Like the wake off a speedboat, those closest to him were still agitated and frothed more.  The men in the street further from the engine became resigned, resumed brushing their teeth in the road or turned to re-enter the half-built abodes.  A distraught woman clenched her fists in the air, as though invoking the rage of her gods, before stooping to gather her belongings.  The crow hopped to one side to avoid her ire. 

Elise followed her, attempting to offer solace, but the lady ignored her.  Eventually, we went back inside, too.  A few moments later, the commotion resumed.  We went outside to look a second time.  They caught the guy and brought him back to the scene of the crime.  Elise saw a shovel on the ground, the metal spade bashed off the end.  

Lines at gas stations stretch for miles.  It's hard to tell where one line starts and another starts.  And two gas stations miles apart are joined by competing queues.  There is a queue for cars, a queue for diesel, a queue for tuk-tuks, and a queue for motorcycles and scooters.  People fill any container with fuel and they bring their jerrycans and two-liter soda bottles by foot, massing around the pump, hoping to catch drips and drabs in between fill-ups.  

At the filling station at the end of our block, the petrol line wraps around the block and crosses the tuk-tuk line knotted around the other side of the block.  They meet in a messy tangle at the intersection, but everything is okay since neither line really moves.  We hired our housekeeper's husband to wait in line. Seven hours later he hadn't moved an inch.

Elise and I rode our bikes to check his progress, bring him water and maybe dinner, if he would accept. Small gray clouds move fast during monsoon season, and one moved over us, seemingly eyeing us particularly to unload its contents on. Fat splatters of rain smacked the pavement and when they landed on my glasses' lenses threatened to throw them right off my face. 

We rode to the front of the queue, to the gas station, a crowd of hundreds milled about, assessing the situation. We singled one out of the crowd, like a cowboy would wrangle a calf or a lion would separate a baby elephant from the herd on the African serengheti. He told us they expected a fuel truck by 6 or 7, another hour or two. We turned tail and relayed the news to Selvam. Up to that point, I was ready to pull him from the line. Give up. Call it a day. And try again tomorrow. Selvam refused to give in that easily. In an easygoing, affable manner he told us it was no problem, like he actually didn't mind at all that he had been waiting in line for seven hours and may have another seven to go. His patience knew no limits. I wish I could say as much. 

He wouldn't return until 10:00 at night. I only know this because he told me so. I had been long in bed by then. 11 hours total. 

Though the gas station is two blocks away, the line of tuk-tuks reached our house, then, went past it. The Chinese wives of migrant construction workers set up an impromptu lemonade stand of sorts in front of their apartment building which drew a crowd with their homemade pastries. The atmosphere along the tuk-tuk line was almost festive. Music thumped from tuk-tuks, and the drivers drifted through the streets, exchanging gossip under the vigilant eye of naval officers in Sea World-blue polo shirts, Russian-made machine rifles resting casually in the crooks of their tanned elbows. 

A growing number of the middle class and students have intervened to, alternatively, support the protestors and the working class, day wagers. Exuberant, t-shirts and cargo shorts-clad youth passed out bottled water and fish buns out of the boot of a Range Rover to the tuk-tuk drivers in line. The greatest signals of community flash when the need is the greatest. Whatever else I may say or think about Sri Lanka is tempered by this movement. 

We now have 3/4 of a tank of gas and don't expect to be able to get more for a couple of months. We try to be strategic about our use. To be honest, we don't drive at all during the week. I ride my bike to work, and Elise walks to the store and most other errands (also, UberEats works really well for most grocery deliveries). That being said, I may not be the best when it comes to the cost-benefit analysis of our petrol usage. For example, Clementine's horseback riding lessons are on the outskirts of the city. Last weekend, despite the very clear threat of tropical, monsoonal rain, I insisted we were going. Yes, she trotted in the rain, the leather reins coming off black in the palms of her hands. She would later report she could hear the rain coming across the rice paddies. When it did, all the ponies, I think, regardless of the commands coming from their riders, perked to a canter and made a beeline for the stables. Yes, yet, all this, I insisted we go. Why? Because, perhaps, there is something I get out of hearing the rain march across the rice paddies, out of hearing the rain smack against palm fronds or drum against the corrugated metal stables roofs, of watching the horses' hides grow slick and shiny with the rain that is worth the petrol.