India is an agrarian society, where farming is not just a means of earning a livelihood, but also a culture that transcends the biological boundaries. We have all been taught in school that India is a land rich in resources. Well, chief among them are humans. And by virtue of inherent randiness, human resources are quite renewable. Given that, it seems as if India was meant to be a big human farm, for none other than our dear friends from the microscopophere - viruses, bacteria, or now the extra-smart Mr Superbug. For them, there is no dearth of crops (humans are among the few organisms that are in heat throughout the year). India presents to our unicellular (sometimes not even that) entities this Petri dish, where they have all the humans they can experiment on and then fashion themselves in the latest microbial haute couture.
Viruses, or the fence sitters (we are yet to figure out which side of the living-non-living divide they fall on), have found fertile grounds here, in the tropics. It's as if they were offered on a platter an opportunity to go out, multiply and fill the world. The strategy, divide and rule, was spelt out for them. The other day, while reading up about Dengue, my colleague and I discovered that it's a virus that loves to travel business class on their exclusive carrier - Aedes airlines. And with a fancy name like flavivirus, who can doubt they belong to the uber-chic movers and shakers of bug fashion. It even deceives you into thinking it's a fancy food flavouring, as a friend rightly remarked.
Speaking of haute couture, our ramp scorching microbes love to change with seasons. For example, Mr P Falciparum and his first cousin twice removed, Mr P Vivax (he's quite a vivacious creature, but can be a little vexatious at times), have now teamed up with Jaundice Bug Inc. in Mumbai. They could be seen all over the town, jumping from one human to another, thanks to the sponsorship of their hardy hardline vector, Lady Anopheles of Buzznia. In fact, doctors here claimed that rigors, which used to be malarial de rigueur in the days of yore, are now passe. Instead, M/s P are now more influenced by influenzal leanings.
That Indian humans are of great nutritional value to the bug fraternity can be seen in the meteoric rise of Superbug, who once used to hide behind the thick microscope lenses in a quite corner of the serumaholics anonymous. While the world wondered and awed, hemmed and hawed, Superbug grew and grew in power. It proved to everyone that human crops in India are the best for rapidly multiplying little bug babies, especially if they are being nurtured in intensive human farms like hospitals and clinics.
Human crops have a dodoesque tendency to indiscriminately infuse themselves with weak antibiotics, irrigate themselves with extra-useless multivitamins and so on and so forth. This invariably works to the advantage of aspiring bug farmers, who too dream of zipping around the globe in their own rubber suits and red underwear. They practically have a party on the farm with such humans welcoming them with open arms and every open pore of their bodies.
India indeed is an agrarian society, where every human is crop, a pastoral delight for the germane germ gestapo.
