The supermarket lights buzzed overhead like tired insects, flickering in the way old fluorescent bulbs do when they’ve seen too many years and too many people pass beneath them. Selina stood in aisle six, staring at the price of rice as if it were a riddle she needed to solve to stay alive.
The financial crisis had turned every shopping trip into a negotiation with fate. Prices rose like tides, swallowing her paycheques before she even touched them. She lived week to week, sometimes day to day, sometimes hour to hour. She had learned to stretch coins until they bent.
Her basket held only essentials: A tin of tomatoes. A bag of rice. A single onion. A loaf of bread that would go stale tomorrow.
She wasn’t ashamed. She was tired, but not ashamed.
At the checkout, she counted her coins twice. The cashier didn’t judge — everyone was struggling now. Selina walked home with her groceries in a reusable bag that had begun to fray at the seams, the city’s evening wind pushing against her like a reminder that nothing was easy anymore.
Her apartment was small, but it was hers. The rent was too high, the walls too thin, the carpet older than she was — but it was hers. She dropped her bag on the counter and exhaled.
Tonight she would make her staple: tomato rice. Cheap. Filling. Warm. A meal that tasted like survival.
Before she cooked, she opened her notebook — the one where she tracked every dollar. Rent. Electricity. Groceries. Petrol. She wrote numbers, crossed out others, rewrote them, adjusted, recalculated. It was a ritual now, a weekly ceremony of endurance.
She closed the notebook and began to cook.
RECIPE — $4 TOMATO RICE
Ingredients
1 cup rice
1 tin tomatoes
1 onion (or half, if money is tight)
Salt, pepper, any spices you have
A splash of oil
Method
Sauté onion in oil. Add tomatoes. Add spices. Add rice and two cups water. Simmer until thick and comforting. Eat for dinner. Reheat for lunch. Add an egg if you’re feeling rich.
Selina ate her tomato rice at the small table by the window. Outside, the city hummed — cars, voices, distant sirens, the restless heartbeat of a place where everyone was trying to survive something.
She wasn’t alone in her struggle. She knew that. But knowing didn’t make it easier.
She washed her dishes, dried them, and placed them back in the cupboard with the care of someone who understood the value of small routines. Then she sat on her couch, pulled a blanket over her legs, and let herself breathe.
Tomorrow would be another day of counting coins. Another day of making do. Another day of surviving.
But tonight, she had warmth in her belly and a roof over her head.
And sometimes, that was enough.
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and then Add to home screen.