Monthly Archive for October, 2006

It was hell.
He couldn’t get a moment of peaceful solitude, because the mosquito was humming in his ears. Why does the mosquito always hum in your ears? How does it know where human ears are? Why does it hold this grudge to humans? A million unanswered questions.

He never knew about how annoying mosquitos could be until he visited Cochin. Of course, he had heard about the dreaded diseases like Malaria, but this experience was downright annoying… There was no other word for it.

The mosquitoes of Cochin were very smart. They knew how to live even in adverse situations. They had adapted to the growing threats that they faced. He realised that from the moment he landed in the bus station. He looked up, and saw a rain cloud in what otherwise was a clear blue sky. Rain cloud in the middle of summer? That was impossible. He looked up again. The cloud was nearing him. He suddenly was reminded of the artificially intelligent nanoparticles in Michael Crichton’s Prey. Then it happened. The cloud hit him like someone throwing several pebbles at him. He struggled and wiggled, but to no avail. The number of mosquitoes in that cloud would have exceeded the number of soldiers in the erstwhile Roman empire. He was enclosed in the cloud of mosquitoes until he reached near a garbage dump. Then they left him in search of a new victim. Talk about mosquitoes which hate garbage dumps. But as he recalled, the Cochin mosquitoes were different.

He finally reached his relative’s house. Inside he was feeling a bit suffocated and went towards the windows to open them.
NOOOOOOOO!!!!
Came the scream from everyone else in the house.
“Don’t open the windows unless you want to stay awake all night”

“What is it with the mosquitoes here? I’ve heard Cochin mosquitoes are unbearable; and had a first hand experience today too”
His relative started his epic monologue about Cochin mosquitoes…

Mosquitoes here are unique. They have adapted to the different condition here. They no longer travel in battalions; they travel in armies. There is nothing that can be done about it. In fact, the notoriety of these mosquitoes is so much that one can write a ballad.

Mosquitoes have given partial relief to the huge unemployment problem of the Cochin people. Nowadays people always will have one job — scratching their backs to get rid of that annoying itch caused by mosquito bites.
Even the tiger is afraid that it might be deprived of it’s National Animal status because of the mosquitoes.

Rashid, the lad who stays across the street had a nasty experience once. He was sleeping when he dreamt that he was checking his weight. His weight initially showed 70kg, then it came down, and down, and down until he was almost as light as a feather. Then he dreamt that he was flying; flying over the terrace. He was doing backstroke swimming in the air. Then somebody nipped him in his hand. He woke up, startled. But he was in for another shock when he realised that it was not a dream, he was indeed flying. A cloud of mosquitoes had lifted him over his bed, out through the balcony and all the way up to the terrace.

Chacko, our neighbor tried the latest Mortein mosquito repellent; the so called “Yama(God of death) of mosquitoes”. He plugged the repellent to the socket, only to hear a high-pitched, almost satirical comment from behind. “Thanks for the repellent, dude. We just love it’s smell.” The cloud was speaking!!!

So on went the epic until he fell asleep. It was then that the solitary skeeter came to disturb him. After sending in the army, was this the commando? Anyway, solitary mosquitoes seemed to be more annoying than the cloud. Just because they seemed to bite at places which were unreachable (by the hand), and at particularly difficult places to scratch, like the bare side of his feet. And they intimidated him with their pesky hum near his ears. They seemed to be very talented in evading his capture.

But he was not going to give up easily. After several minutes of grueling duel, he finally got a chance. The mosquito came and sat in his left arm. He waited until the mosquito burrowed it’s ugly snout to suck his blood. If that was done, he would get that extra time to kill it. He waited and waited, but the mosquito still seemed only to intimidate him. Finally, after what seemed to be an hour, it plunged it’s nose deep to sample his blood. Then he took his right hand and in a lightning fast move, slapped hard on his arm. Blood splattered. The mosquito was dead and was squashed beyond recognition.

He nonchalantly shoved off the dead mosquito from his arm. With a cruel satisfaction, he fell asleep again. He only hoped that Maneka Gandhi won’t sue him for the cold-blooded murder.

Note:
1. Thanks to Nadirsha, the parody singer for inspiring this post by one of his songs.
2. No mosquitoes were harmed in writing this post.