THE GHOST TRUCKS

                 When I was a student at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack  in the early 1980s the Cuttack Municipality had half a dozen trucks to fight mosquito menace. The city ,though the first capital of Odisha and has a glorious history of its own, was notorious for its labyrinth of lanes and by-lanes ,and the worst of all ,the chronic mosquito problem. The mosquitoes multiplied in the sewer water and in the stinking drains. So, to bring respite to the suffering people, the city Municipality had engaged the weird looking trucks to cover all areas to fumigate. Belching out clouds of smoke mixed with pyrethrin the vehicles  would turn the whole areas smoky blurring visibility. Of course, we felt suffocated for sometime, but heaved a sigh of relief  the next moment in thinking that this preventive measure drove away those tiny and despicable blood-suckers ,at least, for some time.

                The Cuttack people used to call them ghost trucks because of their strange look and since nobody knew  when  actually they came and swung into action. Anyway, I had seen them a few  times in our Ranihat area where our  East Hostel was  located. The Cuttack Municipality's Mosquito Mission was commendable, but fizzled out soon as the recalcitrant blood-suckers soon became chemical-resistant and outwitted the human brains that  had sent the ghost trucks to destroy them.

( Writer- Dr. Pradeep Kumar Nayak )