Hriday Ranjan By Express News Service BENGALURU: Dear reader, if you have been a diligent follower of this column, you might recall that two residents in my apartment contracted dengue. I diligently stocked up on mosquito supplies for an impending apocalypse. Creams, fast-cards, sprays and new mosquito racquets were purchased. But while I might be prepared physically to deal with a passionate mosquito, I decided to spend my time in academic research. The results of my research were shocking. I found that mosquitoes are the largest killers on earth – they kill more human beings than human beings themselves. And while we kill each other with guns and tanks and TikTok videos, mosquitoes are doggedly going about their job by resorting to the 50-million-year old practice – of sucking blood. I dug deeper to find India is a particular hot-bed for mosquitoes. Our tropical climate, abundance of water, and weak healthcare facilities combine to provide mosquitoes with a dreamland to thrive, procreate and go about their job killing more people. The months of June to September are when mosquitoes are at their deadliest. Which then led me to a thought – are there countries with NO mosquitoes at all? It turns out there is – Iceland. Due to extremely low temperatures and lack of large lakes, there isn’t a single mosquito in the entire country! It has often been a fantasy of mine; to live in a country with no mosquitoes. I firmly believed that life without mosquitoes would be drastically more peaceful. I wasn’t shocked to find that Iceland ranks No.1 in the Global Peace Index! I began to dig deeper. I knew there were a lot of mosquitoes in India, but never understood why I myself was such an attraction to mosquitoes. My research showed that mosquitoes are drawn to ‘O’ blood groups. And then it all made sense. All through my life, friends of mine would walk about in shorts, while mosquitoes would bite me through thick jackets. I always blamed it on bad luck, but it turns out my blood is tastier to mosquitoes. For mosquitoes, my friends were vanilla, I was dark chocolate-Oreo crunch with choco-chips! By this stage, I was hooked. I began to dig even deeper in my research. I found that human beings have been battling mosquitoes for a long time, but have only begun to take corrective action in the relative recent past. The Atharva Veda mentions a rise in fevers in damp areas and after heavy rainfall. I learned that Queen Cleopatra slept under a mosquito net. But mosquitoes and malaria have deeper Indian connection. It was in India that Dr Ronald Ross discovered the spread of malaria through mosquitoes. The Nizam of Hyderabad appointed Dr Ronald Ross as an army doctor. In 1897, Ross (with no distractions of a Rachel in his life) discovered that female mosquitoes transmit malaria between humans. He went on to win the Nobel Prize and August 20 is commemorated as World Mosquito Day. Like the last few minutes of a psychological thriller, every clue in the jigsaw fell into place. From the evolution of mosquito battles – from ointments to mosquito racquets. With Hyderabad being the epicentre of malaria research, does it strike you as a coincidence that the greatest racquet sportspersons of the country belong to Hyderabad? I have done my research. And I do not see it as a coincidence. They are great sportspersons needless to say, but is it too far-fetched to deduce that those racquet skills evolved from generations of cutting-edge malaria research? The author is a writer and comedian.

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