I tend to stand by the prey, but this time my wholehearted support went to the predator.
On the white tiled dado with leafy patterns they struggled, one for life, the other for the means to sustain its life. When I saw them, a quarter of the cockroach’s body was in the lizard’s mouth. The roach was in no mood to give up, it put up a big fight often dragging and shaking the reptile. I watched the process keenly without battling an eyelid, though on the backyard of my mind were running all the chores that await me at office. At one point it seemed the cockroach would escape. I felt the lizard was dealing with something which was way beyond its capabilities. The whole affair brought back to mind two entirely different things from the past. 1 A scene from a movie in which the fisherman and his boat were dragged along by a shark. 2 A couplet from a Malayalam poem which I studied in school, ‘chakshusravana galasthamam darduram bhakshanathinnapekshikkunnathu pole' (like a frog that got trapped in the mouth of a snake pleas for food). I took my toothbrush, applied some paste and started brushing, all without taking my eyes from the battling duo. It was a slow process, the merging of two bodies - acquisition in corporate parlance - not as in sex, but in a different way in which, only one lives, to tell the tale. As time passed, the prey went into the mouth of its predator bit by bit. Though the resistance had not ceased completely, it was evident that the roach started to accept defeat. Once the lizard finished its breakfast, it raised that cute head, said ‘thank you’ to me for the silent support and scurried away.
6 comments:
Was it a allegory? A metaphor?
In real time life, what are we ,lizard or a roach? Dosent really matter much. dose it ?When a bigger predator venture our way?
it is the cosmic dance, arun. the other morning, after overnight rains, the insects we call eeyampattakal were coming out in hundreds from an opening in the earth and fluttering around and there were crows cawing excitedly and fluttering after them and returning to an electric line passing over our lane with the insects in their beaks. there was something electrifying about the scene in the bright morning sun.
Anil Kurup: I narrated it as accurately as possible. Yet, it was prejudiced or else would I’ve called the cockroach that put up a brave fight, ‘slimy’? Is it how the history of the world is being written? If so, what’s history? Isn’t it just his (historian’s) story, his version?
Venu Chettan: Though I watched the struggle very closely, I’d ensured that in no way my presence determined the course of it. It took almost half an hour for the whole process to end and I watched it agape and had to rush to office
how could u just stand there and let it happen? u mean, callous, cold-blooded $#^%&$^& and u brushed ur teeth!!
We are not supposed to interfere in such stuff, Sumi. And cockroaches, you know, they are my arch rivals.
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