‘Mangalore is endemic to malaria’ that’s one of the first things I heard when I came to Mangalore. Even though I got bit by mosquitos whenever I went out, people started getting malaria (I came to know someone got infected by malaria) when I was in my second year. We had gone to visit some of our friends when they were admitted in the hospital with malaria but, the paranoia started during our university exams.
“Do you know ‘X’ has mixed malaria?” (Mixed malaria is when two types of plasmodium- falciparum & vivax cause the disease)
“Dude ‘Y’ has malaria , she is fine I guess but X is in hospital. We have exams going on. What if we get malaria”
Next day at 6pm when we were out , we saw a mosquito humming around us. Some one pointed at the mosquito and shouted “Malaria! Malaria!”. ‘A’ started explaining ” Mosquitoes, not only transmit malaria, they transmit dengue also……”
‘A’ scared everyone and we could even have got yellow fever from that mosquito bite( which is not found in India). Eventually everyone ran back into their room.
We were sitting in the balcony, and ‘B’ killed a mosquito, ‘A’ called out “Murderer!!!”, B sat back and said ” Be thankful to me, I saved you from malaria, I killed malaria”
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