Mithun Chakraborty would scare off enemies with his on-screen punchlines. Now the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation wants you to be equally scared of mosquitoes depicted in Mithun-like verbal assault mode. Since the regular dengue awareness messages have been done to death — and have had little impact —the authorities have decided to give them a twist to grab eyeballs.
So two walls in every ward under the Corporation will have graffiti with popular quotes. For instance, a mosquito tells a boy: “Kamrabo ekhane lash porbe smashaane (I’ll bite you here and your body will land in the burning ghat)” in a nod to Mithun’s applause-inducing dialogue Maarbo ekhane lash porbe smashaane, from the 2006 blockbuster MLA Fatakeshto.
Again, another slogan in a graffiti— ek machchhar aadmi ko bimaar bana deta hai — has been taken off the lips of Nana Patekar in the film Yeshwant who had wondered a loudhow a single mosquito could turn a man into a eunuch. Not all the dialogues are inspired by reel heroes. Some draw from real-life icons too. One reads Tomra amake jol dao, ami tomader mrityu debo, hammering home a point on how dengue carriers are born in stagnant water, while reminding one on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s fervent appeal to countrymen Tomra amake rokto dao, ami tomader swadhinota debo.
The graffiti depicts the mosquito like an angry wasp, and that too, with boxing gloves on. Under the slogan is a message asking residents not to let fresh water accumulate in their surroundings and to keep clean. One such slogan has been painted on the exterior wall of AE Market. InBD Block it has been painted on the wall of the park and market.
According to a corporation official, every year dengue awareness campaigns are launched but this time they felt the need to do something different to get people to actually read the messages. The punchline-based campaign is being launched before the monsoon as this is when the vector-borne disease shoots up. Last year, there was an alarmingly high number of dengue cases in the township.
Banibrata Banerjee, the mayoral council member in charge of health, said that apart from putting up straightforward banners, flexes and leaflets listing dos and don’ts for dengue prevention, they had decided to paint striking messages in the hope that people would read them “and do something about it”.
“We have asked our teams to paint at least two such messages in every ward. As of now, we are painting walls but have also ordered banners and flexes,” Banerjee said.
Disease count
Banerjee said that since January, 29 persons have tested positive for dengue. These are cases that have been reported to the civic body and does not include patients testing themselves at private clinics and hospitals. A senior official of the civic health department said that apart from conducting regular awareness campaigns, health and vector-control teams are being sent out in residential as well as non-residential localities.
The corporation has 41 wards including areas like Salt Lake, Kestopur, Baguiati, Sukantanagar, Mahisbathan, Chinar Park and parts of Rajarhat and door-to-door visits are being conducted by trained surveyors and health workers. These teams ask residents whether anyone in the family has been suffering from fever and enquire about the symptoms.