In the two-block radius around his azalea-pink house, 72-year-old Natesh “Mo” Mohan has become a coronavirus-era town crier. He lives in one of those quiet, off-the main-drag Uptown neighborhoods where you can count on nothing much happening — until precisely seven p.m. anyway. That’s when Mohan makes a racket.

With a wooden kitchen spoon he clangs a large, stainless steel mixing bowl as he strides down the center of the street. The clanging is meant as a daily reminder of the bravery exhibited by those on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis.

“Thank you first-responders,” he calls as he strides. “Thank you teachers. Thank you nurses. Thank you doctors. Thank you fireman. Thank you policemen. Thank you ambulance workers. Thank you garbage guys. Thank you everybody.”

Mohan said that three or four weeks ago, when he first began his noisy ritual, he thought somebody might call the cops. But instead he’s attracted a fan base. Neighbors appear on their porches at a little before seven, ready to pound pots, shake tambourines and sip wine in solidarity with Mohan. On a recent Sunday, one young man expressed his support while puffing on a hookah.

“Come out and make some noise,” Mohan cajoled as he strode.

Call-and-response clanging broke out from time to time. “It’s like ‘Dueling Banjos,’” Mohan said. “It’s fun.”

Meredith Grabill and her young sons, Oscar and Jack, used pan lids to join in Mohan’s coronavirus awareness cacophony on Sunday.

“We lovingly call it the Mo show,” she said. “It’s a nightly event. It’s a way to connect. It’s something people are really search for. Like Mr. Rogers used to tell us, ‘Look for the helpers.’ Mo helps us remember that.”

Bill Hinrichs and his wife, Cindy, are among Mohan’s devotees. Hinrichs said he admires his neighbor’s steadfastness.

“He’s very religious about it,” Hinrichs said. “I kind of got infected by it,” he added with unintended irony.

Sometimes Mohan blends a Who Dat chant into his invocation of thankfulness. “Who Dat first responders? Who Dat!” he shouts.

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Gary Brandt, who watched Mohan pass from his lofty raised porch, said that pot banging may be practiced in other cities to raise coronavirus awareness, but Mohan has made it seem more personal.

“I appreciate the locavore gratitude,” Brandt said.

Mohan has remained “well kept” with a regimen of “tennis and vodka,” he said laughing. The tennis has kept him fit, the vodka has kept him relaxed. But as a septuagenarian with diabetes and a history of heart problems, he has more than enough reason to take a personal interest in COVID-19 and those courageous enough to stand up to it.

Mohan said that over his seven decades, he’s always taken chances. He arrived from India at age 16 to attend Fordham University in New York and eventually became a Wall Street executive, who’s worked in Zurich and Singapore.

One of Mohan’s three daughters attended Tulane University, stayed in New Orleans and two years ago gave birth to a baby girl. Soon after, Mohan and his wife moved to town to retire and spend time with their new granddaughter.

Not being able to be near his grandchild as much as he’d like is the bitterest part of the self-quarantine protocol, he said.

Mohan’s retirement never happened. Instead, he’s become the facilities manager for all of Entergy Corp.'s many properties in four states. He’s working from home, but he’s just not somebody who hunkers down in silence.

Mohan said that as the coronavirus pandemic spread around the globe, he’d heard of people in Paris, Marseilles and even his hometown of Bangalore, India, banging pots as a demonstration of unity or protest. But it was an incident just a stone’s throw from his home that prompted him to become an awareness activist.

As he explained, the couple who live across the street are both doctors. One evening, early in the epidemic, Mohan began to cross the street to bid them hello as they returned from the work. But the husband, who is an epidemiologist, warned Mohan that “these days you don’t want to get too close to doctors” for fear of being exposed to the virus.

“I said, ‘Thank you,’” Mohan recalled. That was a month ago. It was the first of many, many thank yous to come.