The ballad of Thangachi 2

It was a cool German June morning. SS still had her bearings all wrong. She is still jet lagged. After all, she had just arrived at Leipzig University to present her paper.

Today is a special day. It is the day she turns 50. Yes, the big scary Five-O! Wow, there used to be a time when she thought 50 was the age where people plan for retirement to play stupid little games with their spoilt brat grandchildren. But, hell no! She has so much to achieve. The last things she feels now is old. Sure, a little aches here and there, breathlessness, extra pounds around the mid-riff but old, no way.

Not bad, she told herself. Coming from humble beginnings in a household where melancholy was the tone everyday, she has come far. Her childhood was plagued with chronic asthma which she kept cursing her paternal side of her family as they were the carriers of that gene. Every member of his family had one thing to boast about - asthma. It was like a family heritage. She spent many days crouched breathing to let oxygen permeate through her lungs. And many unattended school days affected her school performance. She remember hitting rock bottom somewhere in the upper primary school when my position in class fell a few places short of last in class.

It is not that her parents neglected her condition. The affordable government clinic accorded short term relief but recurrence was a nagging issue. Frustrated with modern medicine, the family, with their limited finances, still forked out precious money to try Ayurvedic preparation. She consumed litres of dissolved powdered concoctions over years with no avail. Even, Sufi priests had a hand in giving a lease of new life to her. Miraculously by Grace of God of whatever name or origin or the self limiting nature of the disease itself, she was indeed given a new slate, respiratory wise. All those frustrated years of hopelessness and bearing of chiding from mother for not 'trying hard enough' paid off. Her late teenage years was her turning point.

Greed and jealousy are considered enemies of mankind. But combined with willpower and determination, it can be a powerful arsenal, they say. Sure enough, she climbed the ladder of academia and now hope to scale heights that none of her coolie ancestors had scaled before.
Happy 50th birthday, SS.

Even before the euphoria of her birthday sizzled out, she returned home to hear that her sister was about to be driving around the town painting it red with her spanking grey hued new Mazda C5.
If her paternal grandfathers could get as near as being washing car or chauffeuring for a living, these two girls have gone one step further - driving their own car and sending it to car wash! Haha..

Extreme right: Soon to be Dr Sheila Ph D and her entourage in Leipzig University

Strange...

Sleepy Hollow, Kazakhstan
RT Documentary 2014
A small village of Kalachi, 200 miles from Kazhakhstan's capital, Astana, recently hit the headlines for a strange occurrence. Over the past 2 years, unofficially, 200 people have been affected by a benign sleeping disease. People of different age groups, toddlers to the elderly have had the sudden urge to sleep after feeling heavy in the legs. They would sleep unarousable for one complete week and would recover without any morbidity save for initial staggering 'drunken-like' gait.
Examination by the medical personnel did not reveal any neurological symptoms except for transient cerebral edema on CT scans. Biochemical analyses, toxicological studies and samples of water, soil and agricultural thus far had failed to pinpoint any anomaly.
There is a disused uranium mine in the village but Geiger-Muller counts were normal. The only aberrant finding is marginal high level of lead in the water. Experts are still working on the cause of this bizarre disease.

What are you good for?

The Jains are kind of obsessed with not hurting animals that they just shoo a mosquito rather than squash it. Of late, quite a number of people are caring for the welfare of animals, physical as well psychological wise.
Unheard careers like dog whispers, veterinary acupuncturist have secured their stronghold in some societies.
Now, you may say all that is fine but how is a mosquito (also an animal) contributing to society and should be given due respect? All that do is spread disease. In the last census, half of world population from Stone Age have died from mosquito borne diseases especially malaria.
True, only female mosquitoes bite humans as they need nutritious proteins for their potential off springs. And that mosquitoes are also found in the Arctic Circle but they only help to germinate wild orchids.

Maybe the mosquitoes are doing us a favour by competitively protecting us from more severe diseases. Or that they are protecting the green lung tropical forests from intruders to supply oxygen to the atmosphere.

Now that we still continue our deforestation, they must have come back with a vengeance. They too have migrated to our backyard to become city dwellers and give us dengue.
The solution? Mosquitoes are not the culprits here. They just happened to be at the wrong time at the wrong place with wrong genetical make-up to make themselves vectors of diseases. Just that their bodies form a great reservoir for certain protozoas and arboviruses. The real culprits here are the organisms (protozoans or arboviruses), not the vectors, the messengers. Don't kill messenger! The diseases spread if a mosquito bites an infected person only.
We should strive to get to the bottom of the problem, eliminate the real causative agents.

Addentum: Does it answer my children's justification of having chicken in all their meals? Their excuse is there could not be another reason for God to have create chickens other than to garnish the dinner plate! They could not find another reason for their existence in the ecosystem!