Reminiscences of an Aedes (Dengue) Mosquito

Scientists trace the origin of our species to somewhere in Africa, but I am more than content with my stay in India, where I was born and brought up. This country has a glorious tradition of accepting persecuted migrants such as Parsis, Jews and Bahais with open arms and this love is not merely confined to humans. It extends to mosquitoes, locusts, numerous types of viruses and the like, escaping from other countries due to inhospitable weather or stricter hygiene standards.

Like my cousin Anopheles mosquito (which spreads malaria), I too thrive in water, however, our similarities end there. I have far better hygiene standards. I do not stay in dirty smelly puddles or open drains. I prefer much more cleaner, homely surroundings and fresh water sources. I feel more at home in money plant bottles, damp room coolers, uncovered overhead tanks. For outdoors I prefer to lounge in water accumulated in abandoned tyres, coconut shells and at construction sites.

When we first landed in India, our clan was mainly confined to its capital, hence the dengue virus we promoted through our widow-to-window 'sting' operation was often known as 'Delhi dengue'. That way this country is very strange, it has city and region names associated with various diseases. Thus we have Madras eye (conjunctivitis), the same disease is also known as Jai Bangla in eastern parts of the country. Then there is the good old Delhi belly (diarrhea or dysentery caused after eating Indian food), and according to Urban Dictionary it is also known as Karachi crouch - probably to assuage the feelings of our hurt neighbour, who is no way inferior in inflicting such below-the-belt googlies.

Coming back to dengue, our promotion was so successful that it soon outgrew from being sporadic and self-contained outbreaks in certain pockets of the country. It acquired a pan-India presence with the status of a general epidemic that peaks between August and January. Terms like 'platelet count', hitherto associated with obscure diseases like hemophilia, acquired wider currency among aam aadmi or 'mango men'. Blood test laboratories made a killing because doctors began sending every second case of fever to them. It also boosted the sales of mosquito coils and mats, even though we can vouch they are as effective as government schemes aimed at fighting poverty.

It was indeed flattering to hear anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal claiming, "I am worse than dengue" to show how lethal he can be. It made us feel we have really arrived.

We received lot of bad press after Yash Chopra's death. Actually Yashji was not our target. The chick (in our clan only females carry out stings, the males are wastrels who live on fruits and mate with us) who carried out the operation was new to Mumbai and Film City. As a punishment we have transferred her to a more low-profile chikungunya project, which we carry out in the hotter climes of south India.

However, when Ajmal Kasab had dengue-like fever, we started trending on Twitter with congratulatory messages pouring in. Some even promised that if he conks off, then as a mark of respect towards us they will stop using mosquito mats for a week. Sadly it turned out to be a false alarm, and we were denied a windfall.

(A work of low platelet imagination)

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Dubious Drug Trials

Some six years ago my wife had a serious neck pain and we consulted a doctor at a fairly popular hospital in Indiranagar, an upscale suburb in Bangalore. The doctor examined and asked whether it was the first time. Wife replied she keeps having them. Then he said, "You can have an injection one of these days. It is very effective for this kind of pain. However, you need to fill up a form and have a bystander."

Smelling something fishy, we told him we will think about it and took leave. We were at loss to understand why a form needed to be filled or a bystander was required for something as innocuous as having an injection. I felt the doctor had some sinister motive. The news of drug companies enticing people in India to undergo trial was there at the back of my mind. Hence we decided not to go back to him. Wife's pain subsided after a few days of rest and thanks to good old Iodex.

However, for many there are no such happy endings, as they get tricked into undergoing such trials, without even knowing about it. A recent report in a BBC site revealed how deeply entrenched the drug trial racket is in our country. The oft repeated lament that 'life is cheap in India' rings very painfully true.

It revealed that new medicines were being tested on some of the poorest people in India without their knowledge. The report is replete with cases of surreptitious drug trials carried out on Dalits in Madhya Pradesh - ironically one of the BIMARU states. But I am sure that in our country it can happen anywhere, even in economically and socially advanced states and cities.

Being used to cavalier treatment by doctors, these patients and their family members were pleasantly surprised when they were offered expensive imported drugs. They were told that charity organisations were footing the bill. They were never informed about the drug trial, nor was their consent sought. In some cases they were asked to sign forms written in English, which they could not follow.

Hence, little did they know about the disaster in waiting. After the trials many died or ended up with serious medical complications. In case of deaths, no autopsies were carried out to ascertain the cause, nor was any compensation paid.

The report states that Indore's Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital had conducted 73 clinical trials on 3,300 patients - 1,833 of whom were children and many have died. It adds that in the past seven years, nearly 2,000 trials have taken place in India and the number of deaths increased from 288 in 2008 to 637 in 2009 to 668 in 2010, before falling to 438 deaths in 2011, the latest figures available.

"Since India relaxed its laws governing drugs trials in 2005, foreign drug companies have been keen to take advantage of the country's pool of educated, English-speaking doctors and the huge population from which to choose trial subjects," the report added.

The doctors who carry out these trials get rewarded by drug companies with illegal payments and foreign trips. One such doctor whom BBC correspondent Sue Lloyd-Roberts tried to interview called up security and marched her out. Another guy interviewed told the reporter, "The way you talk, medicines would never be developed." It's about time that the country's anti-corruption activists trained their focus on this issue and such doctors.

The drug companies have perfected the art of evading any responsibility of these dubious trials. They delegate the actual work of the trial to Clinical Research Outsourcing Organisations. If there are charges of malpractice, drug companies blame it on them. Hence for those seeking redressal its a wild-goose chase.

All this leaves to one final question. How reliable are these trials? A report by the Indian Parliamentary Committee on Health and Family Welfare said, "There is adequate documentary evidence to come to the conclusion that many opinions [during the drug trials] were actually written by the invisible hand of drug manufacturers and experts [the doctors] merely obliged by putting their signatures." 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Beeped Out

While watching Gangs of Wasseypur, I came across one of those rare comical scenes in an otherwise gritty marathon of a movie (in two parts) soaked in blood and gore, set in the badlands of Bihar/Jharkhand. The hero Nawazuddin Siddiqui flaunts a pager in a mofussil tapori fashion to impress his lady love Huma Qureshi.

I am sure many of the present day smartphone wielding hipsters may not have even heard about pagers. And many who saw the movie were seeing that matchbox like device for the first (and probably the last) time.

It was one of those electronic gadgets which died a premature death, thanks to the technologically superior mobile phone and a free fall in call and text message charges. The fact that one could  only receive messages and one had to call up the pager operator to send a message were major handicaps.

Back in the mid-1990s, it enjoyed a pride of place among the yuppies, almost on par with what an i-pad commands now. Company bigwigs and executives were doled out Motorola's pager sets (it had a monopoly in India) and it gave them a kick to wield them tucked to their belts. At public places a beep from a pager often used to draw admiring glances, often laced with envy.

However little did these executives realise that they were, in fact, falling prey to the first version of 'electronic handcuff' being applied on them by the corporates to ruin their free time and holidays. Later on that role was taken up by mobile phones, laptops, blackberries and i-pads. Remember Hrithik Roshan in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara?

The  introduction of mobile phones in the country did sound a alarm for pager operators, but the prohibitively high mobile phone call charges and handset costs was a cause of some comfort for them. Mobile phone initially was described as a rich man's toy and almost no communication expert back then saw it as a gamechanger in India as it later turned out to be.

The subsequent reduction in cell phone handset prices and call charges soon pushed down pagers to downmarket status. Pager beeps at public places started inviting scorn and derision.

I remember a pager dealer commenting in some magazine (don't recall which one) that earlier his clients used to be doctors, engineers, high class lawyers, but now he has plumbers, carpenters and automobile mechanics sign up as subscribers. I also recall a friend of mine saying, "If you have mobile phone, cool; if you do not have one, no problem; but if you have a pager, people will look down upon you."

Pager's death knell came when incoming calls on cell phones became free. After that it was a swift and steep slide to the e-waste bin of history.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Dad @ 96! Hrmph

At a time when Indian media's view finders remained glued to Arvind Kejriwal and his targets, I happened to come across a news item on India in a British tabloid The Sun, which of course is a telling commentary on why we seem to be always losing the battle against population explosion.

Ramjeet Raghav, a 96-year-old farmer from Sonepat became a father recently! Billed as world's oldest dad, he only bettered his own world record when he became a father two years back. In a country where life expectancy of men barely top 60, it is indeed an unthinkable feat.

In his photograph he has snow white beard and forehead ridden with lines. But surprisingly he seems to be  standing erect without any walking stick.

Sun in its typical tabloidese describes him as 'Randy' Ramjeet and 'oldest swinger in town'. What is more, his wife is 60 years old!

Ramjeet, a former wrestler, said a diet of milk, butter and almonds (thankfully no  chowmein) keeps him young and claimed he was even capable of having more babies! However, thankfully, he now wants his wife to get sterilised, as they now have two children and that too both sons! What more can one ask for in a patriarchal society?

The mainstream media in India seems to have given this story a miss. Even the nosey and chatty TV channels have decided to ignore it. A Google search on Ramjeet only throws up foreign sites such as Huffington Post, Daily Mirror.

Daily Mirror said he admits that his neighbours are more than jealous of his sex drive, saying: “I do it three or four times a night.” And can shame even 25 year olds in lovemaking. In case you thought it was an empty boast, his wife seconds it: “He doesn’t seem old to me, he can make love like any 25-year-old man, even better because he can go on all night, and he makes a wonderful father.” 

The comments section ranged from sassy (someone suggested he should have a relationship with Madonna) to anger over the plight of kids.

A country that is struggling to rein in its burgeoning population, this is certainly no flattering news.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Sweet Tooth For Barfi

Barfi is the new flavour of this festival season with film critics and YouTube enthusiasts having developed a sweet tooth for the movie by same name. They seem to be chomping on it with the same gusto as anchors of foodie shows on TV.

The movie whetted their appetites after it got selected to represent the country at Oscars. The movie makers in their pursuit for 'inspiration' have not even spared Korean and Japanese movies and quite unknowingly ended up providing a 'globalised' spot-the-original-scene contest for critics.

Plagiarism in Hindi and for those matter movies of any Indian language is as old as hills. Movie makers had no qualms in lifting themes, songs and their chances of getting caught was always as remote as noose around Ajmal Kasab.

Within India also this link is incestuous. A Tamil filmmaker may lift a story from Hindi movie, or a Malayalam film maker may lift it from Tamil.

However film makers over the years have become craftier about plagiarism. Gone are the days of lifting themes from just one film. Thus we had a movie like 1970s hit Love Story, based on Eric Segal's novel having 'inspired' many in India. The result was Ankhiyon ke jarokhon se in Hindi and Madanolsavam in Malayalam, which was also dubbed in Tamil as Paruva Mazhai. Now thanks to internet and satellite television, they copy scenes from dozens of films and that too not just from Hollywood.

But little do these filmmakers know that internet can be a double edged sword, as it has also made the viewers more savvy and hence their chances of not getting caught has come down drastically. During licence-permit raj days, very few could manage to travel abroad and even Hollywood films were hardly screened beyond metro cities. Hence they could get away with this daylight robbery on gullible film goers and those foreign filmmakers, whose themes were lifted, somehow were either unaware or thought it was not worth the trouble fighting legal battles amid India's heat and dust.

Lastly, the country's choice for Oscar entry for the Best Foreign Language category always ranged from intriguing to downright silly. So far, barring Tamil movie Jeans, only Hindi films have been chosen for that honour. Most often the chosen films have more to do with star appeal and marketing potential than quality of acting or theme.