Shehan Karunatilaka is the winner of this year’s Booker Prize. He wrote a notebook from Sri Lanka for The Spectator earlier this year.
The late great Sunil Perera, popular Sri Lankan singer and satirist, lamented that people should be clamouring to come to our beautiful island. But with each passing decade more of us find more reasons to escape. Today, the queues at the passport offices snake around the block as many Sri Lankans seek to escape the recent turmoil.
There is little evidence, however, that Sri Lanka ever learns from its errors, yet amidst all this there is still hope
Most Sri Lankans are stuck in slow-moving queues of one form or another, scanning the horizon for the next tsunami, hoping their heads will stay above water. Fortunately, the queues for petrol recently eased slightly, thanks to QR codes and some common sense by our newly appointed leaders. But if credit lines from friendly neighbours dry up, as expected, then they will likely return.
So who is to blame for the mess here? The Aragalaya (the Sinhalese word for ‘struggle’), as the island-wide protests came to be branded, blamed the ruling Rajapaksa family, three of whom were forced to step down, including the President, Gotabhaya Rajapakse.
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