What will become of us?

Illustration/Uday Mohite

MOS, the mosquito was depressed.

Dr Odomos, his older brother-cum-shrink buzzed into the room.

"What's the prob yo bro, what's pissing you off, talk to me?"

"Grrrrrr… feeling left out yo, bro Odo, feeling redundant. Am languishing, man, no ones out on the streets, no one to bug, no one to bite. I'm getting seriously ‘pakaoed'! How much can one buzz around in one's own house, and now our building is sealed, can't even zip into the Misquittas' flat next door," Mos complained.

"This lockdown isn't unlocking anytime soon. Why don't you work out, read some books on your new kindle, like Harper Lee's ‘To Kill a Mosquito' or William's Shakespeare's ‘Machar Ado About Nothing', or Alvin Toffler's ‘Third Wave'. You young people don't read anymore, everything about you is tech, tech and more tech. What game are you playing now?"

‘It's a cool game called Aedes-Anopheles-21. BTW, it's not that I'm bored bro, I'm mad…actually I'm scared."

"Why dude, what's annoying you? Why so scared?"

Mos took a pause.

"You know how Kurt Cobain and Nirvana and Grunge came along in 1991 and closed down Hair Metal?"

"Yezzzzz," Dr Odomos opined.

"I kinda feel this virus, whatever you call it, they keep renaming each mutation, Coronavirus, Black Mucus, now damn Delta, Kappa,Lambada… have taken away the glory from malaria and all sicknesses and diseases."

"It's Lambda. Lambada is a dance step from the '90s," Dr Odomos corrected.

"Yeah whatever, bro, don't get literal. I'm saying, this Covid-19 has put us out of business. I mean, does anyone talk about us anymore, are we called a pandemic, has the city ever locked down becoz of us, is there a shortage of hospital beds becoz of malaria? There was a time when catching Dengue made people nervous. Today, we're passe, yesterday's news, I'm buzzing around people's heads, and they're unconcerned, they don't bother getting a mosquito coil; yesterday, I sat on this one guy's arm, sucking the blood out of him like Dracula, and he didn't budge. This morning I overheard this dialogue in the elevator - A guy says, "My mom has a lung infection."

The lady answers, "Ah thank god, she doesn't have Covid-19." No one's terrified of us, bro. We've lost cache, we've lost traction. We've lost uhm bite, pardon the pun. At this rate, we'll become an endangered species, very soon we'll be extinct - like The Dodo, the Kaziranga Rhino. They'll soon refer to us as ‘The Mumbai Mosquito' - so infamous in the 2000s, but now nowhere to be seen. Doesn't it concern you, no one wears a mask for us, there's no vaccine being developed for us, when there are more than five cases of dengue in a building, the BMC doesn't seal it. I want people to be dengue positive, I want them to begin an app called C-Mos! Man we've created Zika, West Nile, Chikungunya but all flops…I feel like we are ‘Radhe', while Covid-19 is ‘Dabaang'. I'm happy to be a bad sequel, a weak follow up. I'm happy to be part of a franchise…I just don't want to be redundant, like polio, chicken pox or SARS. I fear indifference."

Dr Odomos looked at his patient cum brother, "Mos, you have to calm down. Our brother is working on developing a new TV series on Mosquito Net-flix, called Bloodsuckers, set in a dystopian future, this will bring us back in vogue."

Mos cheered up.

"Tell me the storyline," he smiled.

"Okay, the show is about a band of superhero mosquitoes, who bravely face the super villain called Pegasus."

"What's the OTT series called?" Mos enquired.

"Kachua Chhap-The Agarbatti Returns," Dr Odomos concluded.

Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com