"Didi, do you want me to polish your sandals?" My cousin and me were lolling on the walls of the Pyramids mall on M.G. Rd, Pune, when this query was addressed to us in decent accent and impeccable English. No wonder our heads snapped up. Medium height, thin, sallow-brown complexion, long hair, red jacket, yellow pajamas, barefoot, big smile. In forty seconds, 'Anoop' was diligently polishing our sandals while discussing his mother and sister and his village in Rajasthan and his English education in a nearby Convent. We were thoroughly impressed.
He saw that.
Soon as he had pocketed the modest five rupee remuneration, he struck while the iron was hot.
"Didi, shall I ask you one thing? Please don't take me otherwise, but you can see I am carrying my boot polish stuff in a plastic bag. This way I do not get enough customers. Can you help me buy the proper wood box and equipments?"
I was a little taken aback. Not because I don't expect street children to have such gumption, but because this request was ringing a bell! Where else had I heard this story? A similar emotion was playing on my cousin's face. She too seemed to be grappling with her elusive memory. She came out with 'Raghu' just as I cried out 'Bunty'.
Then she looked at me and spoke out her roommate's name while I mentioned my friend's name.
Readers with me so far? No? You may want to follow the link 'Abhilasha idles' in my 'Blogetarians like me' section. There you may want to read her 'Bunty blog' which may cause several of the chunks of the jigsaw puzzle to fall into place.
There is an idiom in Hindi - 'Tu Daal Daal Main Paat Paat'. The one-up strategy. The counter-move. The stuff that happens during evolution between the prey and the predator - something we called the 'Red Queen Effect' after an intelligent evolutionary biologist read 'Alice in Wonderland'.
We are living in a constant state of tussle - to be fooled or to be callous - that's the question. Intelligent charity - the new mantra of people interested in lavishing shiny 1 rupee nickels on traffic signals.
Saturday 19 April, 2008
Friday 11 April, 2008
Terror at the homefront
The interesting thing about miracles is that they happen - so opined G.K. Chesterson. Replace miracles with co-incidences and the statement holds true.
Less than 2 hours ago (my post in the Gupshup C box shall bear me out), I was bemoaning the lack of inspiration in my amateur career as a blogger. And now here I am, an inspired individual, feeling that familiar upsurge to put words on a web page. That's co-incidence for me. On second thoughts, a more apt quotation would have been 'One often gets what one wants.'
They say inspiration strikes you from unusual sources - it fairly takes you off your guard at times. Well, they couldn't have been more accurate in my case. Surely enough, inspiration to write a blog after a more than a month long hiatus is something I owe to something as uninspiring as a cockroach. Okay, not just a cockroach - hundreds of them to be frank.
Now before I proceed I consider it my holy undertaking to warn my delicate minded readers (er, are there still any left in this literary world of gore and sinew?). What follows is a tale of simply unpalatable violence and written in rather poor taste apart from being wholly useless and without any morals at the end. Proceed at your own risk. Though I do hope you do. Proceed, I mean. After all so many cockroaches paid for this piece of blog with their lives.
I hate cockroaches. Nobody exactly loves them, but I simply dislike them, abhor them, detest them. They are an anathema to me. The only other thing the hatred of which can hold a candle to this hatred is my hatred of lizards. So when I landed into my friend's house for an extended vacation, the presence of several roaches in the kitchen as my chummy flat mates did not appeal to me in the least.
I made up my mind as to my next mission in life. Just like the W.H.O. has made it its mission to eradicate the polio virus once and for all, I decided to do just that with these hideous pests. Breaking News - 'Roaches were soon to get locally extinct from my friend's kitchen.
The first step was to study conditions. Don't snicker. If you think cockroaches can be done away with without proper planning, you've got another think coming. Roaches have outlived dianosaurs - so you can imagine what tough customers they are. Now where was I? Oh, yes. The conditions.
My friend's extremely busy schedule, her maid's stubborn decision to fulfill the cleaning rituals as sketchily as possible and the roaches' inherent resilience against extinction - all had combined together to help the pests build up an impressive number. This part of the research was instrumental in my giving a small demo to the maid on how to be a more comprehensive cleaner - after all I wouldn't be there all the time.
The next item on the agenda was to make a careful demographical study of the population with special stress on behavioural patterns and age class distribution. Which niches did the devils occupy? Well, there was hardly a place in the kitchen which they did not occupy - the sink, the refrigerator, the cupboard linings, even inside the large cooking vessels that are not used regularly. Besides hi-jacking my friend's kitchen for their living quarters, they also had the temerity to use it as a the outside of a Gurudwara where kadaah prasaad is always available. And being the health-freaks that they are, they even utilized the tiled kitchen walls and floor for regular walks.
Carefully timed surveys at meal times and between meal times helped me do the population survey. The head count was impossible to take, in the wake of their overwhelming numbers and the general problem in differentiating one individual from another. But I did get a general idea as to their number. They were infinite. There were several adults and many children, too. Yours truly not being an expert on cockroach sexology, gender determination was another poser.
Not exactly covering myself in glory in the above task, I was still far from disheartened. I had the bigger goal, the bigger picture in mind, viz., to kill, to destroy, to annihilate, to disembody the entomologist's Lucifer.
The next logical task was to get an anti-cockroach spray. There I was not disappointed at all. Whatever spare time my friend manages to have, she devotes it to the killing of these unhygienic creatures and for this HIT spray bottles are always at hand in the house. These canny beasts invariably give her the slip by hiding here and there, simply waiting for the deluge of the spray to die down. Its not her fault. A software technologist cannot compete with a budding ecologist in killing roaches.
Anyway, so here I was, with all the preliminary studies done, all the required material gathered and just the task to begin.
The task began with gusto. In my present status of bachelorhood, it is the cockroach that brings out the housewife in me. I pick up the broom, the dust pan and the cleaning rag without any visible signs of disgust and can make several kaam wali baais become envious or appreciative depending on their constitutions.
The cockroach also brings out the hardened professional killer in me. The general respect and kindliness toward all life forms that had made me take up Biodiversity in the post grads recedes to the backbench in these moments and my baser self takes over. The self that revels in death by violence.
No, I am not taking out a neon-shine knife from my pocket and stroking my chin or palm with it meditatively. Neither my eye has an unwholesome glint in it. Relax. All I am engaged in is opening all the cupboards one by one and emptying them of utensils and the odds and ends of a kitchen. This the den of the Mephistopheles. I believe in going to the core of the problem at once.
Several roaches were shocked out of their pleasant interludes by my simple act of jerking open the cupboard doors. 'What the heck!', I think one of them said to the other. I ignored their chattiness. We professional killers are rather the strong and silent variety. Down came the spray of HIT, hitting the chappies squarely. Some were blown away by the impact of the jet force. They landed and commenced writhing. With one swift stroke of the broom, I swept them away. They were no more important. Important ones were those that were escaping. Running pell mell wherever they could go. I worked both my hands - one holding the HIT bottle and spraying accurately and the other holding the broom and swatting, again, accurately. Five minutes later I was standing triumphantly amidst the corpses. So must King Ashoka have stood after the Kalinga Battle. Only I was feeling no remorse and not even the slightest inclination to turn Buddhist. The triumph any way did not last long. I discovered amongst my victims several that had only been stunned and were now wriggling their legs in an effort to recuperate. Not possible with me around! Another vicious spray of HIT and several bangs of the broom on the floor apart from my occasional stamps of feet on the unlucky arthropods ensued with satisfactory results.
The same procedure was followed with all the other cupboards. It became impossible to know what colour the kitchen floor tiles were. Um, ok. That was an exaggeration, but it sure did become difficult to walk on the floor without treading on what had been cockroaches. The kitchen floor was thus duly cleaned with an indefatigable spirit.
My eyes, trained for the last few hours to register all moving objects from the corner, suddenly detected motion. Lo! A number of roaches, rather panicky after the massacre of their brethren, were huddled along the kitchen slab and walls, above the cupboards. Some were even walking up the walls, trying to reach the ceiling. Not to be undone, I pulled a chair in and stood up. The antic of HIT in one hand and broom in the other was repeated, this time a little higher in the air. This time it became difficult to discern the colour of the kitchen counter. One of the corners of my eyes caught some roaches struggling in a spider web up above where wall met ceiling. Spiders, featuring rather low in my estimation, went several notches up in that one moment.
One more round of brisk sweeping and scrubbing followed, after which I gave a great sigh of relief. I had won. I had won!! My retina registered movement yet again. Ah. Here was one survival, trodding weakly along. I impinged him with the HIT spray, my reflexes by now trained into the 'spray at sight' order of my brains. The creature wobbled. I persevered. The last roach of the kitchen took its last gasp.
My mission was over. I relaxed before the idiot box. Somewhat co-incidentally, they were showing 'Shootout at Lokhandwala' on cable. As I watch the movie and type this yarn out, I am wondering if several hundred ghosts of roaches shan't haunt me tonight. I hope not.
Less than 2 hours ago (my post in the Gupshup C box shall bear me out), I was bemoaning the lack of inspiration in my amateur career as a blogger. And now here I am, an inspired individual, feeling that familiar upsurge to put words on a web page. That's co-incidence for me. On second thoughts, a more apt quotation would have been 'One often gets what one wants.'
They say inspiration strikes you from unusual sources - it fairly takes you off your guard at times. Well, they couldn't have been more accurate in my case. Surely enough, inspiration to write a blog after a more than a month long hiatus is something I owe to something as uninspiring as a cockroach. Okay, not just a cockroach - hundreds of them to be frank.
Now before I proceed I consider it my holy undertaking to warn my delicate minded readers (er, are there still any left in this literary world of gore and sinew?). What follows is a tale of simply unpalatable violence and written in rather poor taste apart from being wholly useless and without any morals at the end. Proceed at your own risk. Though I do hope you do. Proceed, I mean. After all so many cockroaches paid for this piece of blog with their lives.
I hate cockroaches. Nobody exactly loves them, but I simply dislike them, abhor them, detest them. They are an anathema to me. The only other thing the hatred of which can hold a candle to this hatred is my hatred of lizards. So when I landed into my friend's house for an extended vacation, the presence of several roaches in the kitchen as my chummy flat mates did not appeal to me in the least.
I made up my mind as to my next mission in life. Just like the W.H.O. has made it its mission to eradicate the polio virus once and for all, I decided to do just that with these hideous pests. Breaking News - 'Roaches were soon to get locally extinct from my friend's kitchen.
The first step was to study conditions. Don't snicker. If you think cockroaches can be done away with without proper planning, you've got another think coming. Roaches have outlived dianosaurs - so you can imagine what tough customers they are. Now where was I? Oh, yes. The conditions.
My friend's extremely busy schedule, her maid's stubborn decision to fulfill the cleaning rituals as sketchily as possible and the roaches' inherent resilience against extinction - all had combined together to help the pests build up an impressive number. This part of the research was instrumental in my giving a small demo to the maid on how to be a more comprehensive cleaner - after all I wouldn't be there all the time.
The next item on the agenda was to make a careful demographical study of the population with special stress on behavioural patterns and age class distribution. Which niches did the devils occupy? Well, there was hardly a place in the kitchen which they did not occupy - the sink, the refrigerator, the cupboard linings, even inside the large cooking vessels that are not used regularly. Besides hi-jacking my friend's kitchen for their living quarters, they also had the temerity to use it as a the outside of a Gurudwara where kadaah prasaad is always available. And being the health-freaks that they are, they even utilized the tiled kitchen walls and floor for regular walks.
Carefully timed surveys at meal times and between meal times helped me do the population survey. The head count was impossible to take, in the wake of their overwhelming numbers and the general problem in differentiating one individual from another. But I did get a general idea as to their number. They were infinite. There were several adults and many children, too. Yours truly not being an expert on cockroach sexology, gender determination was another poser.
Not exactly covering myself in glory in the above task, I was still far from disheartened. I had the bigger goal, the bigger picture in mind, viz., to kill, to destroy, to annihilate, to disembody the entomologist's Lucifer.
The next logical task was to get an anti-cockroach spray. There I was not disappointed at all. Whatever spare time my friend manages to have, she devotes it to the killing of these unhygienic creatures and for this HIT spray bottles are always at hand in the house. These canny beasts invariably give her the slip by hiding here and there, simply waiting for the deluge of the spray to die down. Its not her fault. A software technologist cannot compete with a budding ecologist in killing roaches.
Anyway, so here I was, with all the preliminary studies done, all the required material gathered and just the task to begin.
The task began with gusto. In my present status of bachelorhood, it is the cockroach that brings out the housewife in me. I pick up the broom, the dust pan and the cleaning rag without any visible signs of disgust and can make several kaam wali baais become envious or appreciative depending on their constitutions.
The cockroach also brings out the hardened professional killer in me. The general respect and kindliness toward all life forms that had made me take up Biodiversity in the post grads recedes to the backbench in these moments and my baser self takes over. The self that revels in death by violence.
No, I am not taking out a neon-shine knife from my pocket and stroking my chin or palm with it meditatively. Neither my eye has an unwholesome glint in it. Relax. All I am engaged in is opening all the cupboards one by one and emptying them of utensils and the odds and ends of a kitchen. This the den of the Mephistopheles. I believe in going to the core of the problem at once.
Several roaches were shocked out of their pleasant interludes by my simple act of jerking open the cupboard doors. 'What the heck!', I think one of them said to the other. I ignored their chattiness. We professional killers are rather the strong and silent variety. Down came the spray of HIT, hitting the chappies squarely. Some were blown away by the impact of the jet force. They landed and commenced writhing. With one swift stroke of the broom, I swept them away. They were no more important. Important ones were those that were escaping. Running pell mell wherever they could go. I worked both my hands - one holding the HIT bottle and spraying accurately and the other holding the broom and swatting, again, accurately. Five minutes later I was standing triumphantly amidst the corpses. So must King Ashoka have stood after the Kalinga Battle. Only I was feeling no remorse and not even the slightest inclination to turn Buddhist. The triumph any way did not last long. I discovered amongst my victims several that had only been stunned and were now wriggling their legs in an effort to recuperate. Not possible with me around! Another vicious spray of HIT and several bangs of the broom on the floor apart from my occasional stamps of feet on the unlucky arthropods ensued with satisfactory results.
The same procedure was followed with all the other cupboards. It became impossible to know what colour the kitchen floor tiles were. Um, ok. That was an exaggeration, but it sure did become difficult to walk on the floor without treading on what had been cockroaches. The kitchen floor was thus duly cleaned with an indefatigable spirit.
My eyes, trained for the last few hours to register all moving objects from the corner, suddenly detected motion. Lo! A number of roaches, rather panicky after the massacre of their brethren, were huddled along the kitchen slab and walls, above the cupboards. Some were even walking up the walls, trying to reach the ceiling. Not to be undone, I pulled a chair in and stood up. The antic of HIT in one hand and broom in the other was repeated, this time a little higher in the air. This time it became difficult to discern the colour of the kitchen counter. One of the corners of my eyes caught some roaches struggling in a spider web up above where wall met ceiling. Spiders, featuring rather low in my estimation, went several notches up in that one moment.
One more round of brisk sweeping and scrubbing followed, after which I gave a great sigh of relief. I had won. I had won!! My retina registered movement yet again. Ah. Here was one survival, trodding weakly along. I impinged him with the HIT spray, my reflexes by now trained into the 'spray at sight' order of my brains. The creature wobbled. I persevered. The last roach of the kitchen took its last gasp.
My mission was over. I relaxed before the idiot box. Somewhat co-incidentally, they were showing 'Shootout at Lokhandwala' on cable. As I watch the movie and type this yarn out, I am wondering if several hundred ghosts of roaches shan't haunt me tonight. I hope not.
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