Hi,

My name is Aedesh Aegupta and I am not a killer Mosquito.

Wipe that smug smile off your face. Hypocrites! If it was some hero bleating “My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist”, I’m sure all of you would be clapping.

Oh! But no! Please don’t clap when I’m around, it makes me nervous.

But why would a mosquito write a note? Well, for one just because I’m not a human doesn’t mean that I lack journalistic skills. FYI, I’ve spent enough time with journalists of high repute and believe me we are quite alike in most ways.

And two, this note is just to set the record straight. The males of all species of mosquitoes do not bite humans or animals, they live on fruit. It is only the female mosquitoes that bite, so quit killing us male mosquitoes and don’t call it collateral damage.

As it is, me and my brethren are being hunted day and night by the entire country because an over-enthusiastic health official makes it a point to publish big pictures of the wrong kind of mosquito with a tag line of “kill mosquitoes” in every newspaper.

FYI again, the female Aedes Aegypti mosquito wears black polka dotted tights and she can lay her eggs even in damp mud and they can hatch even after a year. No eggs for us males, we are vegetarians.

Like in most cases, it is the female mosquitoes who are the cause of all the trouble. All of us male mosquitoes are harmless vegetarians and although we may occasionally take a sip out of your glass of fruit juice but nothing beyond that and we carry our own straws.

The female mosquitoes on the other hand love to suck blood, they say it helps them breed. Personally, I think the females just love the blood red colour around their mouths. Please bear in mind that we are discussing female mosquitoes here, the ones that spread disease and misery.

II’m sure the one question that has been popping up in your head is “how can we tell whether the mosquito is a male or a female?”. No, you don’t have to ask me to drop my pants, there is a very simple way of telling a male mosquito from a female, our straws, snouts, mouths, call it what you will, they are bushy, with hair all around the snout, while the women with their penchant for waxing and hair removal creams have smooth and silky snouts. Makes it easier to suck the happiness and blood out of anyone. This is the easiest way to tell us apart but I know what you’re thinking, killing us and then examining our snouts will not do us any good.

Before you reach out for that infernal Nazi badminton racket and make crispies out of us, please look, identify and then kill only the female mosquitoes. Being electrocuted on ones butt is an extremely unpleasant way to die, who knows you might be reborn a male mosquito in your next birth and I am sure you wouldn’t want to be sprayed, fried or whacked.

Some idiot of a scientist decided to sterilise us male mosquitoes so that fewer mosquitoes would be born, had he worked a little harder and ensured that only male mosquitoes were born, like it is in some states of India, we would have been happier.

This is a country founded on the principles of non violence and dharma, please spare a thought for harmless male mosquitoes, spare us.