The Untold Story

Disclaimer : All characters in this blog may have names similar to real life characters, but their characteristics are purely fictional. Any resemblance is coincidental and unintentional.

I was busy with the usual routines at night before putting my little one to sleep. If you lived in Chennai, and specially during the rains, you would be familiar with the mosquito bat exercise, which was my last ritual before putting my kid to sleep. Just then my 5 yr old came in and asked what I was doing. 'I was finishing the mosquitoes' I told her. "But Mamma, grandpa said not to kill any living things, how can you be so cruel to kill those tiny mosquitoes. And what if you kill the baby mosquito by mistake, God will punish you. "

My face went white. I had no answers. She was waiting for a justification, and I didn't have an immediate convincing answer that would also retain the values she had learnt from grandpa.

"I'll tell you the story behind why we can kill only mosquitoes. You come and lie down,and say your prayers." I wanted to buy some time to make my story.

My daughter spent a lot of time with her grandparents, and as a consequence was influenced by Hindu mythology. As the mother who spent her school days in Christian missionaries I found it difficult to catch up, so I made up my own stories every night. It was a creative exercise and I thoroughly enjoyed the half hour story session, it was nevertheless challenging because my sole audience was a demanding one. The character names for fairy tales, mythology and others had to be unique.

Today was mythology day, I closed my eyes and thought of all possible names I knew. An idea struck me, I recalled all the people I had met that day at office and decided to relax. So here goes the story:

"Long long ago, in the kingdom of Egmora ruled a king called Sowrirajan. He attended to his people regularly and made sure they had all the resources required and that proper systems were in place. The people in the kingdom went to him directly for their day to day needs and he responded promptly.

There was a demon called Amarasura who lived deep in the forests of Egmora. He wanted to trouble the King, and so made a plan. He created lot of mosquitoes and spread them across the kingdom. Children found it difficult to play outdoors, farmers and workers complained, and women found it difficult to complete their chores even inside their homes. One day, a woman named Premakumari who owned a farmland and had been listening to all these complaints decided to take the issue to the king. She met the King and explained the situation and the king promised to find a solution.

King Sowrirajan called upon his special task force headed by Thilak to find a suitable solution to this alarming problem. They knew that finding Amarasura was an impossible task, and so wanted to solve the problem of mosquitos. Thilak and his associate Nareshwaran agreed to come up with a solution. As they sat discussing the issue, Thilak's son came up to him with a badminton racket and said it broke as he tried to kill mosquitoes with it. Just then an idea struck Nareshwaran. Why can't we create a similar bat with mild shock that will kill the mosquitoes. It was a Eureka moment, and they decided to try it out.

When the prototype was ready, they presented it to the king and his advisory team. They were impressed and the King ordered that they create 500 such bats before Diwali and he would gift it to his people. On the eve of Diwali, Sowrirajan called all his people to the temple, sought the blessings of Mahalaksmi and Sowmyalakshmi, the Goddesses they worshipped, and distributed the bats. Everyone were excited and started killing the mosquitoes, and there were sounds similar to that of crackers. People lit lights for Diwali and celebrated the joy of driving away the mosquitoes.

Thus mosquitoes were created by the demon Amarasura and hence the practice of killing mosquitoes at night continues till date and is not considered to be a sin."

There were no further questions, I was proud of my story and decided to make a note of this one. Years later, I will show it to her and we will both share a good laugh.