Kalimpong Calling
Our Monsoons, Mosquitoes and Magic
The third essay from my 2002 book Kalimpong Calling.
It rained the entire night and even now in the morning a thick blanket of unlifting fog has enveloped the whole neighbourhood. I can hear the patter of rain on my concrete terrace and can only imagine the din it must be creating on my neighbour’s newly corrugated roof.
Summer holidays are here, though there isn’t much of the sun to duck away from. Kalimpong monsoons are a bit messy even for old-timers. If you live as I do, away from town in one of those many villages that comprise the suburban landscape of Kalimpong (my village is called “Rock Village,” a recent name reflecting both the abundance of stones and the boys’ fondness for a certain wrestler on WWE), you will be hit by a small plague of earthworms.
These slithering creatures, for some reason, leave the safety of their underground burrows and get swept onto courtyards and even bathrooms. Those not rescued and returned to the earth can be found dried up on verandas, courtyards, and floors. At first they seem creepy, but perhaps not in the same league as the leeches up at Lava and beyond.
A friend once trekked up to Neora in July. He recalls that as he pushed through the undergrowth there was a rustling sound. When the leaves were pulled aside, countless leeches were standing upright, eager to taste the warm blood they sensed in his veins. These creatures have two deadly tools: first, an anaesthetic bite that makes you unaware of the invasion; second, an anticoagulant that keeps blood flowing steadily for them to gorge on.
Of course, blood-sucking is not the prerogative of leeches alone. Their highly sophisticated airborne cousins — mosquitoes — use thermal sensors to hone in with deadly accuracy. Coils and mats help, but they pale compared to the romance of sleeping under mosquito nets. In many homes where personal rooms are scarce, a mosquito net affords a wonderful sense of privacy. It not only keeps out moths and mosquitoes but the world in general.
As children, my brother and I used to catch fireflies and release them inside our nets to serve as lamps. Those bejewelled specks filled us with wonder in a way hard to find in today’s TV-saturated times. The only drawback was waking to their smelly, squashed remains scattered across the sheets — for all their glamour, fireflies have a hideous odour.
Today, science explains their glow through chemicals such as luciferin and nitrous oxide, products of oxidation. Knowledge has stripped away some of the mystery, yet the reason they fly remains as compelling as ever: to signal, to send messages, to attract. Their random excursions in the night sky are in fact patterned love poetry, a language of desire.
The next time you marvel at those tiny lanterns, it may help to remember that there is purpose behind the fire and the flight — the same purpose you might long to fulfil under a quilt on a grey monsoon day, with the unending patter of rain outside.