An ofe to an odious mosquito

This winter has been a difficult time for me. The mosquitoes have brought out more than mere blood out of me. This time they have extracted the poet in me.

This poem is dedicated to all the mosquitoes which share my home. These mosquitoes have real class. They know what they want in life- young and tasty blood. My dad and mom are never bitten. By the way did you know that mosquitoes have the largest number of teeth among animals – about 208? And yet, the pain we suffer is not because of their bite but the puncture with their long nose.

Sorry folks. This time around Milton did not come out. It was Bharatiar, so the poem is in Tamil.

Pullu maela maeyudhu Pasu
En maela paayudhu Kosu
En Ullirundhu varudhu veri
Kosu kaditha idamellam sori.


Now, I have retained the translation and other copyright over this literary masterpiece. So this is the official Neelu Translation

In the pastures, grazes the cow
On me attacks the mosquito
From inside me bursts out the anger
The places the mosquito bit is all bother.

“Sori” freely translates “to bother”. In the strictu sensu, it is just “rash”.

Stop Press: My dad does not have any literary sense in him. He calls this poem a trash and feels I deserve a thrash.

And Life Moves on.....

It is an interesting part of the year. The English New Year is round the corner. Margazhi - the month of devotion for the devout Hindus commences on Monday. I am reminded of my younger days, while I was still in school and when my parents had greater authority over my conduct and which they never hesitated to exercise.

My brother and I were woken up early in the morning, by about 4. After struggling in the toilet at a time totally strange to our body clocks and forced to take a cold bath, we would be hurried off to the Ganesha temple nearby to sing " Thirupavai" with about 400 other kids.

The kids, most of them from the slums near by, could never take a bath so early. Their motivation to be there- the promised gift at the end of the month and the "venpongal" given as prasad at the end of the singing.

About the singing itself, the lesser said the better. Thank God! We cremate our dead. Or else, the legendary musicians who established carnatic music's foundation and the Divine composer of Thirupavai- Andal ( who was incarnate of the Goddess Lakshmi and whose identity merged with the Lord Himself) would be turning in their graves. What an earth quake it would have been. When the last song is being sung, a group starts runnning towards the prasadam counter to get an unbeatable advantage in the queue.

Somewhere in the quest for these trivial pleasure the God and His divinity were somehow irrelevant.