Tome & Plume: Season Changes With Clammy Days, Teasing Mosquitoes, Cold Nights

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): I flicked him off my nose, and he made a tour of the compartment, investigated its three dimensions, visited each window, fluttered round the light, decided that there was nothing so interesting as that large animal in the corner, came and had a look at my neck – Fellow Traveller, AG Gardiner

The first week of November is the time when Bhopal experiences a change in the weather after a long period of wet season. The city sky remained cloudy throughout the last week of October because of the Montha cyclonic storm.

The wintry breeze was blowing across the city, forcing the residents to take their woollens out of wardrobes. They thought winter had come. But it was temporary. 

At the beginning of November, the weather changed. Now, the city is experiencing the normal temperature the month has in stock for its citizens.

Thus, the winter is gradually descending on the city. Evenings and mornings are slightly nippy, and the noon remains clammy. The bone-chilling, teeth-clattering westerlies are yet to blow. This season also causes illness, especially to those who are prone to allergy.

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Merciless mosquitoes

A seasonal cough and cold are common in this month of the year and tolerable. But what humans cannot weather is mosquitoes.

They innumerably grow in this season to suck blood. This is the reason that the cases of chikungunya, dengue, and malaria spike from July to November in Bhopal.

The civic body’s efforts to deal with mosquitoes rarely yield fruit. Every time scientists invent a repellent to keep mosquitoes at bay, they return with more vengeance and attack humans with more ferocity.

In case it fails to bite humans, it has an alternative – either to enter their nostrils or to buzz around their ears – causing sleeplessness. Mosquitoes can grow at any place. It does not matter whether the place is clean or dirty, hot, or cold.

They are contesting humans even in Iceland. The discovery of mosquitoes created a buzz across the world, because the country was until this month one of the few regions which was mosquito-free. The other such place is Antarctica.

Scientists say global warming has made Antarctica hospitable for mosquito populations. It shows the insect, the enemy number one of humans, can survive even in as harsh a climatic condition as Iceland has.

Studies show the Arctic region is warming, and Iceland has gone through record heat this year. Glaciers have been melting. Fish from warmer, southern climes have reached the country’s water bodies.

Mosquitoes are resistant to all repellents and all weathers, because they know Earth better than humans. Scientific evidence says the mosquitoes may have originated during the Early Triassic period, around 217 million years ago, and the oldest fossils of this tormentor trace back to 125 million years of the history of its existence.  

But modern humans first appeared nearly 300,000 years ago, so mosquitoes had been on Earth for more than 200 million years before the first humans saw the light of day. Mosquitoes are bellicose species that spread fatal diseases. As the insect has invaded Iceland, it has reasons to find Bhopal an ideal shelter to live in, tormenting its helpless residents.

As of early November this year, nearly 78 chikungunya cases have been reported in Bhopal. Similarly, 114 dengue and 19 malaria and chikungunya cases were reported last year.

There are many unreported cases. Humans may condemn mosquitoes to death but cannot wipe them out. In 'A Fellow Traveller,' the British essayist, A G Gardiner, describes how the wingy insect torments him on a train, mocking at him and foiling his attempts to do justice to it – condemning the trepid fellow traveller to death.