The driver of an auto-rickshaw on the outskirts of the commercial capital Colombo, she keeps a close eye on the petrol gauge of her sky-blue three-wheeler before accepting a job to make sure she has enough fuel.
A woman auto-rickshaw driver is a rare sight on the island of 22 million people off the southern coast of India. Her monthly income of about 50,000 Sri Lankan rupees started falling from January and is now less than half of what she used to earn. "I don't have words to describe how terrible it is," she said,"I don't feel safe sometimes in the night but there is nothing else to do."In a now familiar routine on one recent morning, she changed her clothes, filled a bottle of water, wiped down her auto-rickshaw and lit an incense stick to seek divine blessings before getting into the vehicle.
The roots of Sri Lanka's current crisis lie in the Covid-19 pandemic, which devastated the lucrative tourism industry and sapped foreign workers' remittances, and populist tax cuts enacted by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's administration. But Ms Deepthi is disillusioned. The car she bought with her savings had to be sold last year after she fell short on lease payments.
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