Ants go marching by......

“Boom, boom, boom, da dum” they went majestically. All in an orderly line, they marched to the unheard sounds. All the legs walked in tandem, the head was held high and they moved forward fearlessly. The finger of destiny hovered for a second over one head and crushed it ruthlessly. Did the army stop? Did the heads waver? Was there any discordance in the movement of the legs? A big “NO” to all the questions! The fallen soldier was carefully avoided and they marched by with the same discipline as before; as if nothing had happened!

I tried everything! Crushed as many as possible (destiny made me do it, I am not bloodthirsty as a rule!); wiped the whole area (top of my table!) with floor disinfectant (this by a self- confessed OCD patient!); sprayed the space with bug destroyers and as a last resort sprayed it with room fresheners! But they came one after the other, side stepping the dead, and marching on, on their path to progress! Soon they were followed by the hearse bearers who picked up the dead carefully (I counted up to four of them carrying the body carefully to some unknown destination!)

They just poured in and out of my laptop keyboard and drove my paranoia crazy- that my life saving machine would conk off! The room perfume made the room smell wonderful but maybe they did not like it, so they went a little haywire and their discipline was broken. Now instead of a single file there were at least five lines moving in various directions. I know that their composure was broken and it gave me some kind of vicarious satisfaction!

I followed the line to find their place of origin and I found they were coming from the balcony from a place called ‘Nowhere’ and travelling to a place called ‘somewhere’. But due to the massacre that I had indulged in, they were swarming all over my keyboard and peeping from under the ‘B’, ‘H’ and ‘S’ keys. I felt as if they were sending me tongue-in-cheek emoticons from there! Ultimately I won the battle (or so I thought!) they vanished just as they had appeared and I puffed into my keyboard hoping to dislodge the last few survivors, but none came! I was at peace!

The next morning too, the little red ants were nowhere to be seen, though I kept an eagle eye out for them! Just to be on the safe side I sprayed my table with the room freshener and gloated over my find of a new bug destroyer. My ‘Whatsapp’ ring tinkled and I looked at the icon indulgently- one of the kids must have sent me a ‘HI!’ I thought. I tapped on the necessary icon and I was assaulted with a lot of ‘OMG’s   a cry of help from my younger one at school that the red ants were coming out of her laptop! This was followed by lot of ‘puff’ emoticons from other family members!  (Did I tell you that she had gloated over the fact that my outdated laptop had lots of space on the keyboard for the ants to go in and that her latest one would not allow them to?) The wicked Machiavellian had crept into the unsecured ‘latest’ laptop to escape the heat and the smell of my room freshener!

The evening was filled with a lot of complaints- about how the horrendous insects would chew up the hard drive and the PCBs and how her life line would fall to pieces. Having won my own battle I wasn't much too worried about others! But to buy peace I gave many suggestions like using the hair dryer to blow them out; heat it up using the keyboard light; blow on them etc. but my little one was suspicious of my advice and she went to the final frontier of getting good counsel – Google! She asked me whether I had a vacuum cleaner (I don’t!) and gave me a disgusted look at my reply but she realized that many people all over the world had been so attacked and had survived and this made her calm down. She fretted and followed all my advice and took it out from the ant infested room for the night.

I haven’t as yet got any SOS messages from that department. I hope the ants have abandoned their sanctuary and found another. I am guilty of homicide and genocide and other horrible crimes but my conscience isn't troubling me too much! As I am writing I saw one little head peeping from under ‘w’ but I smiled indulgently and crushed it to death for having  bitten my little one  on her legs!