EVERY HOUSEHOLD I KNEW had one—a great, big, family-sized mosquito net. It was among the classic symbols of middle-class necessities in our ’60s childhood—a purchase as basic as the pressure cooker, the Godrej steel almirah and Pond’s talcum powder. This 12x12 feet gossamer nylon curtain was our ‘fortress of protection’, preventing us from waking up with red pockmarked faces the morning after, which even Pond’s would not hide.
Growing up in Bangalore, it was with a certain smugness that we regarded our city’s weather. The envy of the rest of India! Well, at least it was for my Madras cousins, who landed up every sweltering summer holiday, thrilled to be shivering on a May morning. But the sound of clapping as evening approached wasn’t applause for our climate—it was my cousins’ barehanded murder-spree among the swarms of singing mosquitoes that Bangalore was also famous for.
Mothers would scream as we left the doors wide open on our way to play in the streets after our evening tiffin and Ovaltine, rushing to shut the windows before 6 p.m. Usually, even this was too late and the stealthy marauders would have already snuck in, lying in wait to make a meal of us when we returned from play to enjoy our own pre-dinner snack.
Denne historien er fra November 2020-utgaven av Reader's Digest India.
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Denne historien er fra November 2020-utgaven av Reader's Digest India.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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ME & MY SHELF
Siddharth Kapila is a lawyer turned writer whose writing has focussed on issues surrounding Hinduism. His debut book, Tripping Down the Ganga: A Son's Exploration of Faith (Speaking Tiger) traces his seven-year-long journey along India's holiest river and his explorations into the nature of faith among believers and skeptics alike.
EMBEDDED FROM NPR
For all its flaws and shortcomings, some of which have come under the spotlight in recent years, NPR makes some of the best hardcore journalistic podcasts ever.
ANURAG MINUS VERMA PODCAST
Interview podcasts live and die not just on the strengths of the interviewer but also the range of participating guests.
WE'RE NOT KIDDING WITH MEHDI & FRIENDS
Since his exit from MSNBC, star anchor and journalist Mehdi Hasan has gone on to found Zeteo, an all-new media startup focussing on both news and analysis.
Ananda: An Exploration of Cannabis in India by Karan Madhok (Aleph)
Karan Madhok's Ananda is a lively, three-dimensional exploration of India's past and present relationship with cannabis.
I'll Have it Here: Poems by Jeet Thayil, (Fourth Estate)
For over three decades now, Jeet Thayil has been one of India's pre-eminent Englishlanguage poets.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Penguin Random House India)
Samantha Harvey became the latest winner of the Booker Prize last month for Orbital, a short, sharp shock of a novel about a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station for a long-term mission.
She Defied All the Odds
When doctors told the McCoombes that spina bifida would severely limit their daughter's life, they refused to listen. So did the little girl
DO YOU DARE?
Two Danish businesswomen want us to start eating insects. It's good for the environment, but can consumers get over the yuck factor?
Searching for Santa Claus
Santa lives at the North Pole, right? Don't say that to the people of Rovaniemi in northern Finland
