The Deadly Injured Mosquito

 

It’s the last week of August. Humidity tickles the nerves instead of the heat. The Monsoon is about to complete its trip. Once again, in this part of Haryana, it is leaving with lot many promises unfulfilled. Deficit rainfall is the norm here. In any case, the Monsoon hardly abides by the law of averages. It’s either too much or too less. Nature has, after all, lost its equanimity, its level-headedness. It’s irritated and grossly impulsive these days. The nature, I mean. And rightly so, for what wrong we haven’t done to her.

As the light peers through a humidity-soaked sky, I decide to make the most of this cool morning. Reading under the open overcast skies has its own charm. While the world gets up, yawns, stretches its arms, gets ready to dab into the birth-time energetic spirits to go jogging and exercising, I decide to pick up this nice book and use my time in the best suitable way I can think of, reading.

The light picks up from across the bluish dark curtain hung over the skies. A cool breeze is blowing. The invisible vestiges of the rain in the previous evening still loom in thin air. It appears like it stopped raining just five minutes back. The words and sentences have a lucid meaning. It is like writing on a clean slate. The brain, after all, is unclogged of extra garbage at this time.

The book is touching. The sentences fetch deeper meanings than they carry at any other time of the day. I read with a trace of smile on my lips. In fact, I feel like I am doing a holy deed early in the morning, like a sage officiating over yagna. I get attuned to the phenomenon of literature, which is nothing but one more effort to portray another aspect of truth from the endless space-time continuum of events and happenings.

If there were sages in ancient India, there were demons also, the fabled rakshasas, who threw meat and bones into the holy fires. They laughed with their deep, rumbling peals of mocking guffaws. An avid reader is the most a modern human can come close to be a rishi, sage, of ancient India. And the demons? Well, there are countless. In millions, and of course, billions. Mosquitoes. The carrier of death, fever, dengue, chicken guinea and what not.

They buzz with multiple layers of preening sounds that crawl over your skin, bruising and itching it long before it strikes with its bloodthirsty snout. They have ultrasonic precision. You feel the drone’s deadly hum from a distance before your eardrum alerts you to the hurtling missile in your direction. On top of that they are bloodthirsty. Who knows, all the demons of the past may have turned into mosquitoes of the present.

Here it drones to spoil my morning. Dengue-wallahs bite early in the morning, my alert system sends a warning against the poisoned missile. I see it then. A huge one, almost as big as a housefly. I’m sure it must have bullied a few houseflies on the way to its mission. The chopper’s buzzing wings cut across the chorus of chirping sparrows on the courtyard wall. In a panic mode, I take a swipe at it. Guess with what? With my book man. What better weapon a bookworm can arrange on such a short notice? The elegant piece of literature turning into a weapon of defense! The rascal deftly dives, enjoying the catapulting rolls in the swirls of air sent down by my papery weapon. Even a mosquito is too good for a book these days. Uffs.  

I jump from my chair, knowing fully well that it will surely succeed in its mission if I keep sitting. Still eager to keep the meanings in sentences clearer like before, I start walking and reading in leisurely circles, pacing up and down the courtyard, sure that the deadly projectile is ineffective against shifting objects. I even take consolation that now it is doubly beneficial, reading-cum-morning walk now it becomes. And here it is again. A super-mosquito, I recoil with fear. I see it just about to land on my hand decently holding the book. These are not the times of niceties after all. This time I see it clearly. It has the ill-famed black and white bands across its hull, the deadly enemy, the dengue one.

Reading takes a backseat and revenge starts. It is too big to get invisible into the cowardly mosquito anonymity in thin air. It has grown too big for its cowardly skin. Its confidence protrudes through its bubble-strong body. I track it to the end of the wall. While I strike it against the wall, the instinct stops me from using full force to avoid a dirty palm smeared with a crushed mosquito carcass. The hand moves with the agilest movement, but strikes with minimum force against the wall. Maybe I want to injure it critically and enjoy a slow death with no blood on my hands. It is too big to go into that last moment’s topsy-turvy dive to escape. And of course sometime you hit the nail on its head, hit the jackpot, win the lottery, get the best girl in the college and bla bla. Similarly, you hit your target, the mosquito, in the second attempt only. A great stroke of luck that should undo most of the miseries of life!

With the scared anticipation of a high school girl waiting for her result, I take away my palm. The feeling is worth winning a million in lottery. My trophy lies against the wall. Not crushed. The force is perfect to send the idiot into coma. One of its wings broken, the other jutting out, some legs broken, the rest swished together, its deadly snout projecting out as if in utter pain. What a sight! One of its antennas moves a bit, to make it icing on the cake that it isn’t instant death. I see the black and white checked pattern on its body. What a kill man! Can’t believe my luck early in the morning!

Well, if such a victory cannot make you happy, I doubt which huge achievement will turn you into a horse-grinned champion?