As Sri Lanka gatecrashes the Twilight Zone, Diogenes Fernando is beginning to wonder just how firmly his own reality is anchored in a Looking Glass world where up is down and down is up.

He is reminded of another Lewis Carroll old favourite, The Walrus and the Carpenter nonsense poem—which, a literary critic wrote, “is actually a criticism of government and those governed”

“The Walrus and the Carpenter can be symbolic of intentionally luring other people with sweet talk, then preying on them (or their money, or their emotions, etc).

“It is a warning to all who read and interpret its meaning to beware false promises. The politicians’ drive for forward progress and political advancement is put in front of the needs of the people.”

And he adds, tellingly: “It is just as much the people’s fault for letting it take place without question.”

Not that Diogenes is complaining. The illicit and highly profitable CatAstrophe asset-relocation scheme created by himself, The Man and his banker buddy was only made possible by the same rampant corruption, cronyism, economic incompetence and delusional stupidity over decades that have now brought the country to its knees.

That said, does it have to be this way? Does Sri Lanka have to be run like a Disney fantasy world, with a cast of cartoon miscreants, misfits and Mad Hatters who believe that words mean whatever they want them to mean—until they don’t?

Meanwhile, he wonders, have our very own Wily Coyotes finally realised that they’ve run out of road, plunged headlong off a cliff, and crashed to earth with a bang and a whimper as a mocking ‘meep-meep’ echoes around the canyon walls?

And will our Looney Tunes political establishment, or what’s left of it, indulge in one last rousing chorus of Hi Ho Silver Lining before being written out of the script and dumped among the other best-forgotten out-takes of our past misadventures?

But the multi-billion-dollar question, as his Ancient Greek philosopher namesake Diogenes the Cynic might have put it, is: although the shapes are shifting, will the underlying geometry remain the same?

All of which is why, as our old certainties and shibboleths rearrange themselves willy nilly across the socio-politico-economic landscape, Diogenes finds himself yearning for the good old days of three months ago.

How on Earth has it come to this, he asks himself? And where will it all end? But, as with the Walrus and the Carpenter, answers came there none…

The time has come, the Walrus said,

To talk of many things:

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax,

Of cabbages, and kings,

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings.