Sri Lanka— notes from the apocalypse

Is this what the future looks like?

I am writing this from a hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the city where I was born and lived in as a child. Looking out of my room on a weekday morning, the Galle Road, this seaside capital city’s principal thoroughfare, is eerily quiet. A train hoots at a level crossing and slowly chugs past, but there are scarcely any vehicles at the barrier. In fact, the usual cacophony of horns and blaring music that passes for traffic here is totally absent. The streets are empty of cars, buses and the usually ubiquitous…