Castaway with cockroaches
By: Sadhaana Ramesh
Tags: Philosophy, Life, Love, Funny, Experience

Photo by Marina Khrapova on Unsplash

“I’d rather stay at the Bates Motel [if it existed in reality] than stay here in this dingy room”, I complained to my friend over the phone. The disappointment wasn’t over the rats close to the refrigerator, the over spilling bin in the lobby, or even the washing machine that smelled. The disappointment was over the tiny plywood-made cupboard, you see. I sighed, but as the daughter of my mother- I knew I had to neatly arrange my clothes. After I was done, I stood proudly for a whole minute and walked away to the dining area. And, oh boy, was the dining area sparkling or what? At that minute, I knew if I brought in a microscope and examined the vessels, I might as well discover organisms never heard of before. This hostel accommodation shared almost all characteristics of the prison, I’d seen in the movie- Shawshank Redemption. A rude Mr. Norton who lurked to check if the inmates were all in, food made with love and a few worms, and who could forget the lady in the kitchen who stirred the buttermilk with her hands- unwashed. It was fate, and it was only, time until I crawled through sewage to attain freedom.

Once I was done eating, I Gene Kelly-ed my way to the room. When I did, I noticed something peculiar. The duvet on my bed had something on it, and it moved. I put on a mental armor and closed in to find cockroaches sprawled all over the sheet. It looked like an aerial shot of people sun-bathing at the beach in Florida during the lockdown. The clothes I had arranged in the cupboard were infiltrated by the roaches, and I panicked as if I were Trump watching an immigrant cross the border. With disgust on my face, I rushed to Mr. Norton’s office and screamed my lungs out-

“Sir, there seem to be cockroaches in the room! Could you help me shift to another room?”

Calmly, he turned to me, and replied-

“Oh, cockroaches, aren’t they lovely creatures? The oldest living pests on the face of the planet. You should learn to live with them. That’s the thumb rule of nature.”

Back in my room, the cockroaches had colonized my cupboard. My clothes were their humble abode, my earrings- its playground, and I- their human friend whose life they had intervened to change. At 11 pm, the only thought that loomed in my head was- How do I sleep?

I had seen enough post-apocalypse movies to figure out a strategy. A strategy that required a pillow to support my head to fall asleep while sitting, a slipper- just in case a cockroach decided to gatecrash my dream, and a place on the floor, secure from the roaches infested bed.

There I was, cast away with the roaches, helpless like Tom Hanks. There I was, cast away in a place that reeked of danger, while the roaches screamed malevolence. The next day, I found out that I had to stay there for another two months because my parents had already paid the rent in advance. Two months! To add to the cosmic joke, all accommodations were full in the area. No to-let boards hung for kids to look at, confuse it for toilets, and laugh at.

So, I did my time of two months with no sleep, a job that I had no interest in, in a city that loved watered-down sambhar, and spoke a different tongue. My emotions, then, were a drop-down menu, only they had the same options- sad. I wish I were one of the writers who could compare my emotions back then to the sun, moon, and stars, but I can’t. For they weren’t as noble as them. It lacked heart because the roaches reminded my ego of all the opportunities I hadn’t grasped, and the person I was not. In the morning, my job reminded me of all the things I could be, if only I let go of the past from the pocket of my jeans.

The roaches and I were at war. It was a war that wouldn’t be published in textbooks. It wouldn’t be a war- cherished or cursed. It would just be another war between the suffrage of the past and opportunities of the present. The roaches that fed my ego represented danger and my job represented malevolence. As a whole, those two months represented ambiguity. It was everything I’d dreaded, and I had to face it with the heart of a lion.

Two months later, the conundrum between the roaches and I was over. I’d done it. I’d faced my worst fears by confronting my shadows, for I wanted to know the light in me. Maybe, it was a good thing the gods above cast me away with the cockroaches.

As I gave away my room keys and hailed a cab to leave for my home town, I saw two men hang a board across the hostel. It read, To-let.