If you open the main door of your home one of these rainy nights, chances are, a moth along with its kith and kin will dart into your living room and perch themselves on a tubelight or the TV. These grey-brown creatures are often shoved into the "creepy crawlies" category that one may perhaps take a swat at. But their brightly coloured underwings hidden beneath the monochrome exterior are the perfect metaphor for the moth story — their numbers are 10 times the butterfly population, making these indicators of our habitat a worthy army of nature, but because their multi-hued cousins take the larger share of academic interest and common man's fascination, there is little awareness about them.

The National Moth Week (NMW) was thus first observed in the last full week of July 2012 in the US, to encourage people to turn citizen scientists to observe and document the moth population in their locales, apart from involving more entomologists to study the insect. Since then, the initiative has reached more than 80 countries, including India. From its humble beginnings here, the country now has 50 registered events during the NMW, being observed this year from July 20 to 28, second only to the US.