To Kill A Crawling Cockroach

The only creatures; after dogs, rabbits and dolphins I’ve cared about are cockroaches. And especially those that wish to share my home sweet home with me. But it is not undying love that I have for them. It is bitter hate makes me care for the fact that those thumb-long flying creatures do not inhabit any nook and corner of my house.

I would like to be honest. My hatred for cockroaches comes out of a cowardly fear of these things. This terror is out of one thing alone – if I don’t get some one (mostly my angel of a mother) to kill them, they will take those thread-like feet and that ugly brown body and crawl all the way up my beloved skin.

I can remember one such incident – that happened with my father (luck me!). One sunny afternoon, that huge cockroach with its tiny feet managed to crawl up to my father’s bed. My unsuspecting father was deep in beauty sleep. And then, just like that, the cockroach crawled up his foot. My father in his sleep, kept begging, “Please stop tickling me! Please.” My mother entered the room and heard him pleading. It was then that my father woke up and was aware of the sickening creature on his perfectly clean foot. I grew up with that memory – the cockroach crawling on my feet when I am asleep. And that’s what disgusts me about their presence.

My family is well aware of this fear. So one day, when I had a nice warm shower, changed into my long pink nightie and got out of my room, my mother warned my of a flying cockroach in the passage. I screamed at full volume and jumped. It was the combined effect of the jumping and the screaming that made the cockroach run into some unfound corner. I’m humiliated to say that this fear blinds me. So, my silly mind thought that the cockroach crawled up my long pink nightie. So I jumped more and screamed more on my way to my room. I jumped up to my bed and kept jumping till I was satisfied that the apparently-climbed-up cockroach had left.

This was also the result of the fun that my father wanted to have looking at me jumping like a jack in the box. Finally, over all my screaming and my dad’s laughing my mother informed me of the unwanted guest’s death. All chaos ended there, but temporarily only.

It was another day and another cockroach. I had entered home and ran into my bathroom. I peed my way to relief and stood up to wash my hands. And there it was, again! Creeping out of those tiny holes that allow water to exit, in my wash basin!

I ran out in a hurry like it was a matter of life and death. I screeched for my savior – my mother. She entered my infected bathroom and I slammed the door shut. My mother located the cockroach and reopened the door to ask for a slipper for a murder weapon. I screamed telling her to shut door. But she wouldn’t listen. I could see the antennae of the cockroach, nearing the open door. I pleaded again, “Ma PLEASE shut the DOOR!” She leant me a deaf ear again. At this point, I knew she wouldn’t shut it. I had to do something myself. I ran to do the open bathroom door, banged it shut and yelled at my mother telling her that I’ll get the slipper quick.

I waited, in great anticipation, outside my beloved blue bathroom after handing the slipper to my mother. It was an eternity later, when my mother reappeared. And those three beautiful words she mouthed, “It is Dead.”