Kill The Virus, Not Us Poem by Bashyam Narayanan

Kill the virus, not us

Recently this fever is frequently reported
Some even die
People infected by this virus
Range from slum dwellers to farm owners
Even doctors are not spared
Why a very successful film producer
And director too succumbed to this
The blame come on to us, the carriers
We, the Aedes mosquitoes
Thrive on juicy leave saps
And our female members have to have a
Human blood meal
If not for anything else,
For the continuation of our generation
The blood meal is taken early in the morning
Or in the evening with sunlight still being there
We have no clue as to
Whether the person on whom we feed
Suffers an infection of dengue or not
You may not know that
We too get infected by the virus
But we manage well without suffering any symptoms
By the time when all our body fluids
Are enriched with virus it will be
A week or ten days passed
After the blood meal from the infected person
This is when we become real carriers
We have the potential to infect a healthy person
With dengue virus if we happen to bite that person
We are just carriers, not knowing what we carry
Blaming us only is unfair
You hurriedly take measures to eliminate our species
It is not at all possible
We brave all your biological weapons
And you may not be aware that some of us
Have already developed resistance to
Most of your branded repellants and pesticides
We have some of these suggestions
For your staying uninfected by this virus
We admit, we only spread the infection
Remove and clear all such spots
Where we may establish a habitat
We suggest that you use a good mosquito net
And keep us away from you
We repeat, your repellants and pesticides
Are no longer effective against us
Or your genetic stalwarts can engineer
A mutation in us
So that our system itself produces an antigen
Against this virus
And the virus is made non-infective further
Or immunize your people against the virus
Do something with your great scientific effort
To relieve us of this burden around a viral infection
Your mission must be to ensure
That we, the Aedes mosquitoes and you
Have a harmonious co-existence
Kill the cause, not the carriers
Kill the virus, not us