Okay, first things first: this isn’t about the
entertaining eccentricities of my colourful kith and kin. Not that it wouldn’t
make for thoroughly enjoyable writing; no, I abstain from detailing the
idiosyncrasies of my various relatives due to the nagging fear that one of them
may read this article and come after me with a machete. So the said weird
inhabitants aren’t people in the
general sense of the word- although the only difference seems to be that people
can talk, and they can’t (which, by the way, qualifies them as infinitely
better co-inhabitants). I’m talking about the various creatures that are
insensitively labelled as ‘vermin’ by us. And there really is no dearth for
such creatures in my home in Kerala. Sit in a room and stare around, and it’s
like watching the Animal Planet in 3D- Keralites will know what I’m talking
about. And what better season than monsoon for these ‘guests’ to seek refuge in
the warm and dry recesses of a house? So when you are a
bored-out-of-your-brains teen left to her own devices and have nothing but
formidable (and untouched) piles of holiday homework for company, these perky
pests seem like friendly companions. And so, here’s a list of the interesting
acquaintances I made during the holidays:
The Lovelorn Lizard
They’re everywhere, these lizards. But they don’t care for humans—the way they
stare at you from the walls, it’s like you’re
the mannerless intruder in their
house. They’re so aloof that my disgusted ‘gaaaahhh!’ upon seeing them soon
simmered down to a grudging ‘humph!’; really, after all my histrionics, you’d
expect them to freeze in terror in the least! Nope. Not a chance. They just go
about dropping their tails like Cinderella dropped her glass slippers (although
I must say Prince Charming will be more likely to pick up the latter), and
snapping up anything with wings. So I was, naturally, mildly flattered when one
of them took quite a shine to me. It keeps staring at me from behind the clock,
with tiny beady eyes. Our eyes meet each time I look at the time…even as I
write this. Okay, dude, this is getting creepy….go eat some moths or something.
2
The Cat that gives me The Eye
There’s a snow-white feline femme fatale on our terrace. And she has a
super-sweet kitten who snuggles up in one of the old boxes lying around. Even when I know I’m supposed to be ploughing
through Maths at the study table put out on the terrace, I can’t help stopping
every now and then (and every other now and then) to stare at her and
the kitty. Each time I come closer and peer at the adorable ball of fur that is
young enough to still be tinged with a newborn pink, Mom (who is always
stretched out beside the kitten, reminding me of Cleopatra languorously
reclining on her gilded divan) lifts up her head, and stares at me with her
witchy green eyes. At first, she seems to warn “Don’t even think about it,
Weird Psycho!” But when she sees that all I do is stare back apologetically (I
know it’s creepy, ma’am, but your kid is CUTE!), she lazily rests her head on
her perfect paws and continues to doze, as if to say, “Like, whatever”.
The Friendly Neighbor,
Spiderman
It’s hard to think that there’s anything
friendly about a black, hairy spider as big as your hand, I know. For most
people, it’s nightmarish. But strangely enough, as he scuttles across the walls
late at night when I’m the only one awake in the house, watching movies, I feel
oddly comforted. Really, when there are bloody, rotten zombies lunging at you
from within the screen, and nothing but darkness and scary noises outside, a
burly spider on your side feels safe.
The Napping Gnat
Come nightfall, and a plethora of insects of all shapes and sizes crowd around
the flickering tube-lights. If you happen to be studying beneath one of them,
your book becomes a ramp for this crawling cavalcade, and it is a welcome
distraction from the mind-numbing boredom of reading through textbooks. During
one such parade, one bright bug caught my attention. Although hardly bigger
than the full-stops in my book, he seemed hell-bent on reading the lesson along
with me. I watched with curiosity as he wove in and out of the lines of text
with considerably more enthusiasm than me. But I soon discovered how
like-minded we were when he slowed down after the first paragraph, and came to
a complete halt in the middle of the third. I wasn’t surprised: if a few lines
of academic information can numb our famously complex and massive brains,
imagine what it can do to the minuscule mind of a bug. From sheer exhaustion,
the tiny thing had fallen asleep. And so, after gently nudging him towards a
margin with my finger, I too, lay down my head on the pages of the book, and
followed suit. (This was only after weighing the possibility that he may wake
up and crawl into my ear, and deciding that textbook-induced sleep was way too
deep for that).
5
Peeping Tom Toady
As usual, I got into the bathroom, and was about to turn on the shower when I
realized I was staring at a fat toad who, sitting on the faucet, was giving me
a look that said, “Hullo, I got here first!” Let’s just say that if humans
could move as fast as I did then, we wouldn’t have needed machines. But I was
rather brave, if I do say so myself- only after I got out of the bathroom, and
the possibility of the toad leaping off the faucet and onto my face occurred to
me, did I scream my head off.
Now, as I look around me and see these miniature
minions of monsoon (how’s that for a tongue twister?) clinging onto the walls,
crawling on the floor, hovering around the lights and unfortunately, floating
in my cooling cup of tea (yuk), I wonder if they’re all looking at me and
thinking “Whoa, this is just like watching Human Planet in 3D!”
