When the curfew was lifted, so did our spirits. Some made a beeline to a local beauty or barber salon while others looked to set the bar higher (read the lines and then in-between them).

Then there was the usual pursuit of life, liberty and entertainment with a lack of imagination. Even in the throes of a pandemic, one’s taste for the good things in life never soured.

Sweet – the way some show-offs were keen for the world to know they were able to order take-aways from five-star hotels. Share the delish spread and fancy provender you whipped up in a jiff so that poor folks starved for amusement on Facebook wouldn’t miss out.

Spare a thought for the seriously hungry with the usual ‘thoughts and prayers’ platitudes. Party on!

A few fun-loving folks in the hill country even chilled out at a funeral at the end of May. Did someone mention that the ‘new normal’ would be nothing like the old? Old habits, like party based voting patterns and visits to your friendly neighbourhood public house, die hard – and the more some things change, the more they stay the same!

So what did you miss most while curfew tolled the knell of departing day?

If you’re a common or garden islander, you’d have yearned for the great outdoors beyond your little garden patch or a stroll around the commons so beloved of Colombo’s walkers and loafers. A few individualists (and not only many introverts) confessed that they’d missed nothing much.

Hats off to them!

How to make the most of the truly precious things in life had escaped our attention in life before COVID-19 hit home hard. Health, for example, is wealth – you may never quite appreciate it until the threat of losing it hangs over your head like that peacock on a suburban roof… true story.

Happy are they who are content with a little wealth and lots of good health. As for me, I had a sort of ‘sea fever’ – the title of a haunting shanty by an erstwhile British poet laureate – coupled with a strange yearning to see a train go by again. So much so that I penned a piece in an upswing mood, which I reproduce below with apologies to John Masefield and you.

“I must go down to the seas again,
to the lovely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a seaside train
and eyes to spot her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the klaxon’s
song and the white smoke sailing,
And a green smile on the sea’s
face and a golden sun setting.

I must go down to the seas again
for the call of the clacking wheels.
Is a wild call and a clear call
that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a clear blue sky
with the storm clouds forming,
And the flung spray and the blown spume,
and the train’s brakes screeching.

I must go down to the seas again,
to the train-spotter’s vagrant life,
To the fan’s way and the buff’s way
where the fume’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is to ‘cop’ an engine’s number
from a laughing fellow-traveller,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream
when the long haul’s over.”

All the world is weird save you and I – and even you are a tad weird… or is it me?

For instance, would you agree that the coronavirus brought out the whacky and wonderful in all our island race?

On the one hand, there was the social media circus with its smorgasbord of self-indulgence. On the other, those solid citizens with their consciences intact – who challenged abuses of power, championed good causes and crowdsourced funds for their invisible fellow citizens who fell through the cracks.

I love Sri Lanka and its zany knack of surviving disasters from democracy and despotism, to tsunamis and viral contagion. To celebrate, I must go down to the seaside again. But someone said the beach has been washed away…