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tell you that she had gloated over the fact that my outdated laptop had lots of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!
