Mosquito makes man a eunuch!

Once upon a time, when doing Yugpurush or something similar, actor Nana Patekar said, “Ek machhar aadmi ko hijda bana deta hai.” (A single mosquito can turn a man into a eunuch). He is so bloody right.

While I am still much a woman, I HATE mosquitoes with every last red blood corpuscle that I have in my body (and the ones the winged bastards have not sucked out). I am currently at my parents place – not Kolkata as someone masquerading as me has typed in the chat box – and I look as if I’ve had red-spot tattoos on my body. My legs, arms, thighs and back are dotted with itchy, little red dots no-thanks to the mosquitoes that have been having a week-long buffet on my body.

Seriously, if you are bothered by mosquitoes and need a solution, invite me over. I seem to act like some sort of mosquito repellent for other people since when I am around, the shits ONLY bite me. So much for us humans being the smartest of all species as we still have not been able to control moskies. Once the science text books spoke of having eradicated malaria, now it’s back full swing. Not to mention dengue, also perpetrated by the blood suckers.

Mosquitoes have no conscience. They will bite you when you are celebrating your happiest moment or lamenting a loss. They will bite you when you are killing yourself to meet a deadline and even when you are making love. A mosquito bite during sex is VERY inconvenient. First you have to stop, then you have to scratch and if you can’t reach the spot, you have to ask your partner to scratch. Bloody romance killers.

I don’t know the species of mosquitoes that are now around but I can personally vouch that these parasites have evolved.

Earlier if you lit a Kachua coil (Tortoise brand mosquito repellants that are burnt and the fumes are meant to kill them), the moskies would fly helter-skelter. It was good fun watching them try and escape the fumes, smother in frustration and collapse. Then when Good Knight mats hit the market, the little blue tablets did pretty much the same thing. NOW though, the moskies seem to have competitions diving INTO the fumes of the kachua coil. And I swear to the lord, I have seen at least three moskies sitting ON a hot, supposed-to-kill-them Good Knight mat and getting a tan.

I have seen moskies the size of my nose in Sikkim and have heard stories those could kill a horse. I am much smaller though thankfully those never bit me. Apparently Norway has mosquitoes the size of airplanes and drivers are asked not to collide with them. :[ Here at my parents place they aren’t that big, but are just as mean and just as skilled in the art of giving maximum pain. They also seem to compete in who can give me the biggest bump that later turns into an angry red burn that stays for a week and itches me.

For one, there are the guerilla mosquitoes. These are the ones you will never see till they bite you. Even after that and sitting with your eyes plastered on the walls and trying to find them, you will never manage to catch one and YET be bitten WHILE you are hunting for them. Some brazen ones seem to mock me by buzzing from right under my nose.

Then are the F-51 jet-mosquitoes. These dudes attack in a formation and make a straight dive for you. So while you try to defend yourself from five, there’s another two choosing that tender spot at the back of your neck, or behind your knee, or between your toes, or on your eyelid. Have you ever been bitten on your eyelid? I have just been, even as I type this. Shits.

I am sure at least some of you have encountered the Phoenix mosquitoes: You squash them in your hand, or against the table or on the notebook and JUST AS you think they are dead and remove your hand, the bastards zoom off. They DON’T die, they rise from the dead! Some of the Picasso mosquitoes also display the phoenix trait. Picasso moskies are the ones that bite in a pattern… Like I discovered five bumps on my thigh after my video game session last night and realized the bites looked like a flower. Or bites that are in a zig-zag or some such pattern. I appreciate artistic license and all that, but not with my blood dudes.

It’s a pain, sitting and writing here because I have suffered serious blood loss by the time I am done with 500 words. And now that I have to go and play my last round of Empire Earth – can beat the computer in the island scenarios but am thwarted when I choose the land scenarios – as tomorrow this time I will be on a train, I dread the bites I will have. Sigh. If only I could bite the bastards and make them feel the pain. If only.

PS: Um, have you heard of any women addicted to video games or a particular video game? My father reckons I am going to destroy my still-to-be-made family because I forget to make breakfast as I am playing a video game. If you know of girls who play games AND still manage to run families, do share. I will tell my father. Sigh. Going now, my kingdom calls.

Been there, done that, for all to see

Apologies for the vanishing act. Was moving cities and am not in Delhi anymore. Where to and what now, will surely update when the time is opportune. A lot has passed, moving from a city that was home for a decade but never really took me as one of her own, making friends with people who were like passing ships through my life -- stop, dock, refuel and move -- to those I started out fighting and then became friends with, my entire career and the start of an 'independent' life where I learnt a lot and made more mistakes (new ones each time too!)... Changing so many houses, losing hope in humanity and regaining it through a certain dimpled smile and looking forward to something so new, so different, so challenging that I think I am still in shock. Golu Dawg did NOT die, he has been put up for adoption. So much more but in time...


Hindustan Times, June 26,2008
Been there, done that, for all to see

There are three distinct changes in travel today: One, you don’t ‘go to grandma’s’ for all holidays, you don’t have to buy extra film roll anymore and you can upload a picture from your mobile to your blog and show-off instantaneously. Today, as much as travel is about seeing the world, it’s also about showing the world.

With every new travel photograph uploaded on social networking sites and more pins on their “where I’ve travelled’ maps, holidaying is now about where you’ve been and how many know about it. For the choice of destination, experts to backpackers, everyone has an experience to sell. If a tour operator like Intrepid Travel promises off-the-beaten-track tours, Bug Bitten offers been-there-done-that travellers’ recommendations on where to go. With more people blogging their experiences, you realize that flight turbulence scares everyone, no one is happy with the service and despite technology, the seats in planes and trains are still uncomfortable. Greg Messon of Greg Messon’s Esoteric Earth writes simply, with much (often lengthy) detail and often echoes other people’s thoughts when he blogs, “I never quite got comfortable in my seat, so sleep never came, however I was at least able to watch 3 movies on my personal entertainment unit…” Or when Chris blogs on The Art of Non-Conformity saying, “It takes a long time to get to Jerusalem from Seattle, especially if you’re planning your trip around the lowest ticket price…”

Through pictures, text and videos, travel blogging is one of the hottest blog topics.And people are finding creative ways of story telling.

One of most popular forwards was the video of Matt Harding, the software engineer who quit his job and traveled the world, dancing before various places and monuments. Freelance illustrator and graphic designer Mike does it through sketches on Blogshank.

From the usual I-did-this-went-there blogs to Cranky Flier who follows every airline development fanatically and the blog Hope and Healing that chronicles the lives of two physicians who’ve been working in Liberia, travel is getting a new dimension. It also makes for open criticism. Tony France rues the end of class in luxury planes, “With their reputation for engineering, I can well believe that, back in the day, Lufthansa had better seats but it was a no-brainer that Air France had better food!”

This column appears every Thursday in The Hindustan Times

Boys will be bloke bloggers

The Hindustan Times, June 19, 2008
Myth-buster # 1: Men are blogging away and most of them aren’t tapping away about sports and electronics, but about health, fashion and – of my god! – home improvement

Here are two of the greatest myths about men: one, men don’t blog much; two, men think about sex every seven seconds. A quick search reveals that not only do men blog, they do so on topics other than HTML codes or battery-operated devices. Relationship author John Gray and company have long blamed men for being ‘non-communicative’. Not in cyberspace at least. The boys blog it all: weight, fashion, relationships, sex – and even – babies. Sample this: “The gym is a place that used to silently mock me whenever I walked by: Hey fatty, you enjoying that fifth slice of pizza?” blogs Arjewtwino. While he discusses weight issues and fashion – “I just don’t know what to wear, I’m packing for my trip to NYC” – he also writes on ‘men’ subjects like his favourite soccer team, food (a favourite with boy bloggers) and being kicked in the gonads. “…I always wondered from the worst moment of my life: what was the science of getting hit in the nutsack?” he writes, not something you’ll find on a woman’s blog.

Despite blogging on similar issues, humour differentiates ‘bloke’ blogs from the ‘babe’ ones. If ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ is the underlying tone in babe blogs, the boys do it in a more self-deprecatory manner. Even home-maintenance sounds funny. The Home Improvement Ninja blogs: “I had hoped that by killing all of them (mice)… it would forever deter others from ever trying to come back. Unfortunately, mice have a short memory.”

While ‘tags’ (blog lingo for topics) include hitherto ‘chick’ issues – no moisturizers yet, but grooming figures – don’t think that bloke bloggers are any less ‘men’ than the boys who only blog on tech or electronics. However, they do seem more open in challenging so-far accepted-male-behaviour. Tearing apart the much-man-loved movie Fight Club, the Ninja blogs: “Some guys think this movie is great… (they) hide their insecurities by fawning over this homo-erotic ritualized violence and faux philosophy about why it's okay to be a underachiever with no direction.”

While he declares “all men are liars”, 2006 Best Weblog Awards-winning blogger, Sam deBrito too does his bit in accepting men might not always be right and takes on the how-to-be-man concept. “I had also unknowingly bought into the gender propaganda that insists a guy must be A, B and C and done my part to propagate it to other men and women,” he writes. An insight into the mind of men is what bloke bloggers have to offer, peppered with sports statistics and humour. And it seems, at times, honesty.