Take Paris. Utter the double-syllabic name and you’re transported to boulevards, brasseries, musees and outdoor cafes. Mosquitoes are the last thing you’d associate with the Paris of the West. But it turns out that health authorities there are fumigating vulnerable areas of the city for the first time to kill disease-carrying tiger mosquitoes who have started plaguing parts of northern Europe. Municipal fumigation, whose white smoke is something we in the tropics are familiar with, has led to roads being closed and people told to stay indoors when ‘spraying is on’. This is after two people so far have fallen sick with dengue after returning from a foreign trip. If a tiger mosquito bites a person carrying the dengue virus, the mosquito becomes a carrier of the disease. This is creating panic. But not so much in Paris, as much as among third worlders planning to migrate to first-world places. For, if Planet B turns out to have Planet A woes, there will be no Planet B for those seeking greener pastures.
