For quite some years, I did not encounter a bedbug. I thought it has become an endangered species, shortly to become extinct. During my childhood days (I am 79 now), bedbug hunting was a regular pastime. We used to have cots woven with cotton tape. The tape was completely removed, the wooden bed frame bared, and then the tape was boiled in scalding water. The bed frame was given a dousing with the same water, and the bugs taking shelter in the crevices of the wooden joints were mercilessly weeded out and sent to their Maker (If he is different from our Maker).
Later, when Tik-20 made its appearance, it almost put paid to these elaborate operations, as well as the bedbugs. This insecticide itself had a short market life, since some people were found using it to end their own lives. For whatever reason, whether better hygiene or better practices to make beds bug-proof, it was hardly seen, at least in my circle, later. It became almost a memory.
On a visit to Mysore, I happened to stay in a hotel there. In the night, I found that there were occasional bites when I slept on the bed, spread with clean white sheets. To my surprise, and perhaps a little joy as if meeting long lost friends, there were a host of bedbugs scurrying round on the bed. I reported the matter to the hotel manager next morning, and since I was there only for one night, I do not know whether any steps were taken to get rid of them and more important, what happened to my friends.
Similar is not the case with lice. They are definitely not an endangered species. Lice have a tenacious life in the coiffure. Especially if children have long hair and plaits, lice find a very fertile ambience, and it will be a difficult task for the mothers to keep the lice in check. There are any number of lice killers in the market, but none of them totally eradicate this scourge. I know of some mothers using a very fine-toothed comb, and using both their thumb nails to crush the lice with a pop.
Bedbugs are a different story. It was possible to eradicate them totally. But sometimes, they do escape and then proliferate. The other day, I was travelling in the Garib Rath superfast train from Visakhapatnam to Secunderabad. I secured a set of bed spreads, by paying the mandatory ₹25 a set. When I opened the pillow cover, I found one of my friends lurking in a corner. I promptly despatched it to the Maker, hoping it is a matter of exception rather than the rule. When I opened the bed sheet sealed cover, I found yet another one. As a matter of fact, these bed sheets are washed regularly in laundry machines, and no way these bugs alone could have survived. But such is their stubbornness.
In a novel by Telugu writer the late Mullapudi Venkata Ramana of the famous duo of Bapu and Ramana, there was a mention of bedbugs in the cinema hall chairs of yore. He avers that when the stub of the cinema ticket was shown to these bugs, they stopped pestering the viewers, since the bugs were supposed to be trained to bite only free viewers, so they would desist from visiting cinemas.
Humans are hosts to a number of living creatures. Most of them could be seen only under a microscope, but bugs, lice and mosquitoes are very visible unwelcome guests and they in turn hosts some that try to invade our system.
There is a regular battle going on, with and without our volition!
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