Malaria Serves Us Right.
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 1994 Sep / Oct Vol III No 5.
Manu Kothari.
India had ceased to be on the world map. Suddenly plague arrived to raise India to global consciousness. As the plague-paranoia abates, malaria is waiting round the corner. A country is known by the parasites and microbes it hosts. And it hosts the microbia it deserves.
Lest if appears that it is only India that has taken the microbial beating, let it be known that even the most developed nation has its own special microlife that poses now special microlife that poses now and again as monster. The atom bombs, the AK-47, and the missiles mean nothing to the microbes. And pesticides and drugs are now vitamins to them. What hope has mankind?
Let me confine myself to our motherland. A celebrated text on medicine states two great truths -
- Mosquitoes readily breed in standing fresh water.
- They cannot breed in running water. We have dammed our rivers through the length and breadth of our country. Nay, we have created miles and miles of standing fresh water to offer to the mosquito guests, the traditional, generous Indian hospitality!
The Narmada Dam promises to be the proverbial last straw on the Gujju camels back. (The Rajasthan canal already had its toll of malaria victims recently - Editor) But the Gujarat hankers for more power, more money. Health and sanitation can wait. After all more malaria, more cerebral malaria, will mean yet greater boom for the pharmaceutical business. Blue-chips!
The other sin to which we have turned a Nelsons eye is our pushing some natural fertilizers (urine and stool) into gutters where as a biomass, it must convert itself into biota that shun sunshine. Hence more cockroaches, rats and of course, mosquitoes. Where into do the gutters flow? Of course, the rivers - the Yamuna - the goddess Jamunajee of the Vaishnavaites - is a gigantic commode that accommodates all the shit and pee of our capital sprawl. standing shit and pee, shall we say?
A Red Indian chief prophesied in 1854: "The modern man will drown in his own waste." To that extent we certainly are modern.
Back to the plasmodium, also called Syncytium. The way it choreographs itself back and forth between mosquitoes gut and mans erythrocyte, we are forced to admire its itinerant genius. At a symposium on microbes and man, a British authority had observed that a single streptococcus has more genius than all the microbiologists of the world put together. A single plasmodium has greater resourcefulness than all the drug makers of the world lumped together. In case you one-up it by a vaccine, it will smilingly mutate to make the vaccine a laughing stock of the microbial world.
Malaria is not a malady but a symptom, a sign. As a symptom, it indicates that in our blind pursuit of progress, we have fouled up our air, botched up our waters, poisoned our fields and foods and zombied our minds. As a sign, it pleads that the meanest microbe or the puniest plasmodium is as much God incarnate as a Buddha or a beauty queen. There was a time when these microbial outcasts restricted themselves largely to the marshy lands. But mankind missed the point, reclaimed (?) the marshy lands and inherited for itself the hordes of mosquitoes and their like.
A philosophical Dictionary of Biology - by a Nobel Laureate in medicine declared in 1983 - "Inspite of the present difficulties, malaria will be eradicated." Mr. and Mrs. Plasmodium happened to meet the prophesies at a dinner, where they could not resist saying - "Surely Prof Medawar, you must be joking!"
Malaria is here to stay. If it stays a little too wide, many of us would have to go. We have asked for all this. We get the microbiota we deserve.
Dr. MANU KOTHARI MBBS., MS., MSC.
Bombay - 54.
