Diogenes Fernando sighed and mentally totted up his profit and loss for the past seven days. Profit: zero. Loss: three weeks of scheming and plotting, two king-sized bottles of Black Label, and one would-be business angel. In short, not a good week. To make matters worse, loan-shark Boris ‘The Bite’ Fernando is now demanding his overdue interest payments, The Man is refusing to take his calls, and Basil ‘The Bolt’ Bandāra has downed tools on their electric tuk-tuk project.
All this because the would-be business angel, Sir Crispin (“call me Sir Crispy”) Cholmondeley-Featherstonehaugh, Chairman & CEO of ElectroDynamic Solutions, India & UK, had blown a fuse over something Diogenes unwittingly said. But how, thought Diogenes, could he have known that no-one is supposed to know about Sir Crispy’s wife’s affair with the mayor— which is, in fact, to Diogenes’ certain knowledge, public knowledge? Or that his alluding to this amour improper after copious amounts of Black Label would result in the three of them—himself, The Bite and The Man—being ordered off the enraged English knight’s upcountry estate at gunpoint?
They had assembled there to thrash out a business plan by which Sir Crispy would fund development of the tuk-tuk project. This should have led to profitable joint sidelines backed by a suitably anonymous offshore bank account. The deal would also have cancelled Diogenes’ debt to The Bite, and considerably raised his standing with The Man, for whom his fleet of tuk-tuks provides a discreet 24-hour delivery service.
Now, however, instead of this happy state of affairs, Diogenes is forced to recall the immortal words of Apple’s late great tech high priest Steve Jobs: “Sometimes life’s going to hit you on the head with a brick,” but without the codicil: “Don’t lose faith.” Not that Diogenes had much faith to begin with. For a start, he wouldn’t trust The Bite and The Man—joint motto ‘I Came, I Saw, I Swindled’—as far as he could throw them. Add a trigger-happy Sir Crispy, and he had no doubt who would have been left holding the bag if and when the fraud squad came calling.
Meanwhile, it’s going to take more than faith to get his electric tuk-tuk project back on its wheels, even if Basil ‘The Bolt’ could be persuaded to take up his spanners and continue where he left off. Added to which, he would likely have had to go crawling back to Uncle Testosterone and explain that, no, it wasn’t his idea to cut him out of the Sir Crispy deal, and could he now kindly refocus his mind on where they’re going to get the electric tuk-tuk development money from.
Which would be easier said than done even without the backlash from coronavirus threatening to turn the global lights out. And in any event, could Sri Lanka’s faltering power supplies have coped with the demands of a million electric three wheelers? Ah well, nil desperandum, another day another dollar, as Horace might have said. And as always, business, no matter how nefarious, is still business (except when it’s not, and angels are not angels).