My dear friend Anopheles was with me after a long hiatus. I wished her a Happy Mothers' Day. But her mind was elsewhere. She said, "What is black-marketing? Aren't you a marketing prof.?"
"Yes," I had to agree. And added "Though we don't put it in white and black categories, it's an illegal practice of selling something for more than it's real or legal price. Sometimes it's harmless, like cinema tickets or cricket match tickets. Known as scalping in America."
"And your pals are selling life-saving machines and stuff in black?" she looked incredulous.
I must admit this didn't look very good for the country, or humankind which was turning out to be unkind- heartless, even. Still, I tried to defend us as a species.
"It's just a few bad apples among us. Lots of people are actually helping out with free medicines, or oxygen too." I said weakly.
She was caustic. "Well, if your species goes down or vanishes, don't blame us. We neither caused this Corona thing to spread, nor are we responsible for how you behave in times of a crisis. At the most, maybe there were cases of malaria, or chickengunya that we were spreading. But you found cures for these. Why can't you find cures for COVID?"
I said, "Not sure, but we were busy buying guns, or manufacturing them, or both. Didn't have money left for scientific or medical research."
"That should teach you a lesson you won't forget in a hurry." was all she had to say. I didn't want to stretch the conversation any longer, and so I promised to discuss this another day, and called it a night.
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