His leg is injured now, so it is harder for him to go each day to the road. They don’t have money for the bus, so he walks long distances. She says fewer people are giving money like they used to. Some days he comes back with nothing.
I ask her what she does on those days. She looks past me and says, “those days we don’t eat.”
I ask her if she ate today. She says, “not today.”
She then looks at her home and tells me, a long time ago, maybe six or seven years now, a company came and said they would build them a house. They told them to demolish what they had so they could take a photo. They agreed. But they never came back to finish it.
It took them many months just to get the house back to what it is now.
Now with the floods, with the heat, this is where they are each night. This is where they sleep, live, and eat. She says all the homes around them are like this, so there is nowhere to go even if things get worse. They cannot protect even the little they have. Their clothes get wet and stay wet during the rainy season, and they just continue wearing them like that.
She says, “I am getting older now, but I will be here for a long time still, and I am thinking how we can live.”
There is no space to step away from it. No second room, no dry place, no way to rest properly when the rain comes or the heat builds. Everything they own sits in the same space they cook, sleep, and live in. Over time, it just wears them down quietly.
At one point she stops and just holds her head in her hands.
I sit with her.
I tell her there is something we can do. I tell her that there are people who support this work, and if they hear her story, someone will step forward.
Today, you are hearing her story.
About the Telugu Community
Susila is part of the Telugu community in Sri Lanka, a small group with roots in South India. Many families came generations ago through migration for work. Some have lived as travelling groups, moving from place to place and earning through things like animal charming, small performances, or asking for support along the way.
Because of this, many families did not settle on land or go through regular schooling. Over time, they were not included in the same systems or programmes as others.
As these ways of earning became less reliable, many families were left without stable work or a clear place to settle. With small numbers and little representation, they have been left to manage on their own over many years.
Today, families like Susila are trying to find a more stable way of living, starting from what they have, and thinking about how to build something better for their children.