Skip to main content

Mosquitoes and Politicians



Mosquitoes live long. They were around in the Jurassic era sucking the blood of dinosaurs. The wretched dinosaurs eventually vanished but mosquitoes flourished. Now we have more than 3000 species of them with us in spite of all the poison we carry in our blood which they feed on. It seems all our jingoism and bingoism are like Boost, the secret of mosquito’s energy.

We shouldn’t tarnish the history of the entire species, however, though reshaping history has become our main national pastime these days. It is the female of the species that is deadly. The male mosquitoes are vegetarians feeding only on plant juices such as nectar. The females not only suck our blood but also urinate on us after sucking the blood. Science tells us that it is their way of purifying the blood they have sucked. No wonder our jingoism doesn’t poison them. You will never come across a Hindu mosquito or a Muslim one or whatever. They don’t have slogans and mottos to kill for. They just suck blood. Our politicians should learn a lesson from them: suck blood without preaching. Oh, maybe they already learnt the entire lesson from mosquitoes including that peeing chapter.

It is possible that our politicians descended from mosquitoes which have certain preferences in bloodsucking. They are more attracted to women than men, it seems. In that too, they prefer blondes. Well, where blondes are available. Where they are not, Fair&Lovely will do. Ah, mosquitoes are as intriguing as our politicians for whom blondeness translates into wealth. No wonder they won’t ever become extinct, mosquito or politician. The more intriguing you are, the greater your chances of surviving as a species. That was the last line written by Darwin in his diary which is yet to be discovered.

This post is written in response to Parwati Singari’s provocation at Indispire Edition 387: a world without mosquitoes what do you think will happen? #zeromosquito

It’s impossible for me to imagine a world without politicians and mosquitoes. If they are not there who will suck our blood?

Let’s conclude this with a climax of trivia. Question: Why won’t you find mosquitoes on the head of Sardar Patel?

Answer: Mosquitoes don’t fly beyond 100 metres at a stretch. The Patel statue is 182 metres tall.

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    Interesting analogy... and here is a very interesting article which demonstrates that mosquitos have fooled most of us into thinking their scope is limited... beware, all! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. wow, Tomichan enjoyed this one, this is different from your usual style.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Circus called Politics

Illustration by ChatGPT I have/had many students whose parents are teachers in schools run or aided by the government. These teachers don’t send their own children to their own schools where education is free. They send their children to private schools like the one where I’ve been working. They pay huge fees to teach their children in schools where teachers are paid half of or less than their salaries. This is one of the many ironies about the Kerala society. An article in yesterday’s The Hindu [ A deeper meaning of declining school enrolment ] takes an insightful look at some of the glaring social issues in Kerala’s educational system. One such issue is the rapidly declining student enrolment in government and aided schools in the state. The private schools in the state, on the other hand, are getting more students. People don’t want to send their children to the schools run by the government systems. The chief reason is that the medium of instruction is Malayalam. The second ...