A units Euphonium and Harmonium seem to have cornered the local market for COVID-19 patent panaceas. Customers far and wide swear by the former’s home-made Eau de Cologne for fighting infection, while the latter’s equally potent home-brewed arrack—a true ‘spirit of enterprise’ dodgy distillate, indeed—helps take the sting out of curfews and quarantines. It also means that since Diogenes Fernando is being paid cash on the nail by both aunts for his fleet of tuk-tuks to deliver their concoctions around the neighbourhood and beyond, customer satisfaction guaranteed, he’s also looking on the bright side. This happy state of affairs is thanks to The Man arranging with the appropriate authorities for said elixirs to be classed as ‘urgent medical supplies’. Complete with all the necessary paperwork, this enables said tuk-tuks to pass unhindered and unmolested through the town’s police checkpoints. Additionally, and not coincidentally, it also allows for the continued discrete 24-hour, 24/7 delivery by Diogenes himself of The Man’s own ‘medical merchandise’. His only worry, times being what they are, is that if word gets out about these particular home deliveries, some of the town’s more unruly and unscrupulous elements might try their hands at a bit of entrepreneurial hijacking. Which is why he has now equipped his tuk-tuks with tracking devices, dashcams and panic alarms. He has also himself put the word out that if anyone messes with his drivers they will be messing with The Man. And The Man being The Man, this would more than likely be the last thing such misguided and foolhardy miscreants would ever do. Capice? Meanwhile, in the spirit of the ongoing world war on coronavirus, Diogenes has taken to wearing the oxygen mask, leather flying helmet and goggles favoured by WWII Spitfire pilots.
He also mounted a powerful loudspeaker on the front fender to replace the tuk-tuk’s puny horn with the sound of eight Browning machine guns firing in synch. His defiant rationale was that since we’re all now on another world-war footing, so to speak, the stirring words of then British prime minister Winston Churchill vis-a-vis Spitfires and true grit, and complete with appropriate warlike sound effects, spring naturally to mind: “We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.” Furthermore, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”. Except for one thing. The sound effect of 8 Browning machine guns firing in synch had, not surprisingly, quickly and in short order sparked two full-scale terror alerts. This had resulted in Diogenes being warned in no uncertain terms that if it happened again he would be in very serious trouble. So the loudspeaker was reluctantly surrendered, and the machine guns fell silent. But the fight—with ‘growing confidence and growing strength’—against COVID-19, which will hopefully be won in a timely and orderly fashion, and with Diogenes himself in the vanguard, one way or another, goes on. In the meantime, if it also permits a bit of timely and orderly free enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit, so much the better…