Mosquitoes & Me

Most people say that they are not very good at writing about themselves. I have no such qualms.

I suppose I owe my existence to a multitude of mosquitoes in Zambia. If they hadn't decided to breed in millions in the sultry town of Mansa, the Zambian Government would not have called my father, an epidemiologist, there to control them. And my mother would not have been mind-numbingly bored minus her magazines, books, friends and TV, while my father was busy chasing little winged creatures. And she would have never agreed to have another child, namely me!

By the time I was 5, my father had done away with more than half of the mosquito population there, and it wasn't fun anymore. So we trudged our way back to India, in search of greener and more pathogen-ridden pastures.

But don't feel too bad for the poor mosquitoes! The buggers has their revenge when they quietly palmed off a P. Falciparum into my bloodstream around the time Bryan Adams was in town. Yes, I was sad enough a teenager to want to attend the concert.

But enough about pathogen and something relevant about myself. I live in Melbourne. I masquerade as a journalist. And for the record, I have no clue what I want to do five years down the line (A favourite question of interviewers).

I love reading anything, but books about history, art and the extraordinary in the ordinary will be less dustier on my book shelf.

I live with my two children and one husband in a townhouse in Richmond, Melbourne.