This happened in Patna, my home town. It is impossible to simply stand still outdoors in Patna after it starts getting dark. The population of mosquitoes is so thick in the city that if you walk after sundown on a street, you have to literally wade through a sea of mosquitoes whose impact is continuously felt on bare skin of the face and arms. And if you stand for even a few seconds, hundreds of mosquitoes attack from all sides and you must keep moving if you want sanity and safety, often in that order.
This happens every day and has been happening so long people have accepted it as a part of life. I wanted to tell you a little incident but this background about the level of mosquito menace in the city was necessary to let you understand where I am coming from, not literally, just figuratively. We will see in a while why it makes no difference where you come from literally, that is, geographically, all over India when it comes to the madness of mosquitoes.
So one evening I was at a roadside kirana shop buying some stuff and as usual, finding it impossible to stand still because of mosquitoes. A little distance away a loudspeaker was screaming, “Zindabad, zindabad, Sonia Gandhi zindabad.” Not very far from it, another loudspeaker was at its loudest, “Ab ki baar, Modi sarkar.” For a while these slogans didn’t register on me, as they shouldn’t on people who don’t want to lose their mental balance while being pounded with profanely unhealthy levels of noise pollution of the most irritating kind.
While I was not tuned in to the polluting sounds around and focussed on my twin act of purchasing my stuff and dancing to the collective will of mosquitoes, I asked the store keeper, “You have to sit here every day. How do you manage the mosquitoesIJ” He said, “It’s terrible. I apply a mosquito repelling paste all over my exposed skin every day. I do it twice, first at sundown and then two hours later because the thing works for only about two hours. I know this profuse daily use of the chemical is not good in the long term, but what do I doIJ”
Well, it was then that through some strange socio-politico-eco-environ-psycho cocktail of factors that is beyond human comprehension, I became aware of the nauseating electoral sloganeering hammering all around me. “Are these leaders bothered about mosquitoesIJ Why aren’t they talking about itIJ All kinds of issues are big election debates.
leaders and Governments come and go. But the nuisance of mosquitoes never goes. Why aren’t mosquitoes in the national debates, in election speeches, in party manifestosIJ Mosquitoes stand for many really important issues. They stand for sanitation, sewerage, urban planning, civic responsibility, tax payer money, political will. They stand for corruption, ignorance, criminal apathy.”
I had worked up a lot of heat and the store keeper tried to cool me by saying, “Oh, they do use machines to cut them down.” But I got even more worked up. “Yeah,” I said. “And that has not cut down the mosquitoes, so they aren’t really working and are just a huge waste of public money. Half the machines rot after they are bought because they are made to fail.” The store keeper was still not convinced. So I said, “People talk about public debates among national leaders. I have a simple contest for them. My vote goes to the man or woman who can stand here five minutes without moving. And you and I spend our entire life here. let them see what life here is. The mosquitoes of the country are enough to show the kind of people we are. And the kind of people we choose as our leaders.”
The store keeper smiled and I was soon out of the shop. I then spoke to relatives and friends in Kolkata, Kanpur, Delhi, Rourkela, Hyderabad and Salem. They are all warring with mosquitoes.
It is definitely a national issue. I also spoke to relatives in Canada, Singapore and England. They have mosquitoes but the situation is never as ugly as India. Common people and the Government in these countries have the awareness and will to keep things under control. Someone who has been to Brazil and Chile said these nations have mosquitoes.
Seriously, mosquito could be as noteworthy an index of the level of development of a nation as infant mortality rate and per capita income. But what exactly is the mosquitoIJ let me turn a bit other-worldly, a little poetic. I find the mosquito a marvel, a miracle, a mystery. look at the size of the thingy — just a flicker of a shadow, a phantom of fear dancing in the air. But it is life nevertheless, and life feeds on life. It is a fantastic mechanism of nature whereby a creature next to nothing in size and weight to a human being has a system in place that makes it thirsty for human blood, enables it to identify where that blood is, allows it to extract the blood and leave behind death and disease.
It is genius on part of nature, a master stroke of its creativity. Osho says love is the orgasmic dance of life and death in the moment here and now. Well, if ever that dance happens, it is in the dance of the mosquito above human skin, a
perfect synchronisation of life and death — if mosquito lives, man dies; if man lives, mosquito dies. And the beauty is that today man and mosquito live and die together as equal partners in co-existence. Now if that’s not pure love, then what isIJ
This co-existence is an alliance of mutual dependence. Mosquito needs man to live, man needs mosquito to live. Man needs mosquito because big-time research is happening all over the world to rid the planet of mosquitoes and the diseases they cause. Pharmaceutical business selling medicines to cure diseases caused by mosquito needs mosquito. The businesses of nets, coils, mats, sprays and other merchandise that repel and kill mosquito need mosquito. Huge Government departments bulging with taxpayer money are there to finish off the mosquito because, well, the mosquito is there. The mosquito is bread and butter, bank balance, bungalow and badge of honour for man. Mosquito is money.
No wonder our leaders don’t make mosquito a national debate. Who knows, if mosquito becomes a national debate, people may actually work to finish it off. That would be bad economics. And therefore bad politics. Good politicians don’t engage in bad politics.
So I shout at the top of my voice, “Sonia Gandhi zindabad, ab ki baar, Modi sarkar, jai Mulayam, jai Mamta, jai...” Mosquito has given me the equanimity of indifference in the midst of the present electoral maelstrom — it makes me see all leaders of all parties as one. For when it comes to mosquito, I know they will all ensure that man and mosquito live together ever after.
amitshekhara@gmail.com