Unexpected Enlightenment- A
Cockroach Story
Even so, I’ve never been a big fan of bugs and I
couldn’t take the first few days of living with them. I was constantly filled with anxiety and fear. I was so paranoid that they were on me,
that I kept feeling little roach feet running on my legs, arms, back,
neck. Even if they weren’t there,
I felt them. I felt them all the
time. I could often find a roach
if I looked for one, but even if I didn’t, I knew they were there, behind the
curtain, under the hanging rugs, in the cabinets- everywhere.
When I’d come home at night and turn on the lights, I’d usually see at least eight-to-ten roaches running for cover in all
directions. This was what I termed
the “mad dash” and it happened every time I came home to a dark apartment. It got worse. When I’d lie in bed reading, it was common to see a roach
running along the headboard toward me.
I got so used to this that I put a box of tissues on my nightstand and
would just take one, kill the roach that was heading my way with a tissue and
throw it on the floor. Within an
hour or two, there would be at least seven-to-ten tissues lying on the
floor. Once, while I was reading,
I grabbed a mug of water I’d put on my nightstand and as I brought it to my
lips I just managed to catch sight of a roach running around the rim of the mug
at full speed as my mouth was only a few inches away. He almost got me that time!
In the middle of the night, I would get up to
take a piss and when I grabbed the doorknob to the bathroom in the darkened
hallway, I’d often feel a roach run over my hand and jump to the ground
below. It was truly horrible. In the mornings, I would get up and
open the drapes in my bedroom only to see four or five roaches falling from
them, hitting the floor and then scattering for cover under the radiator, bed
or into a crack in the wall.
I got into the habit of putting little balls of
Kleenex into my ears before going to sleep as I was quite freaked out by the
idea of a roach going into my ear and not coming out- similar to something I
had once seen in a Star Trek movie as a child. This was a constant thing while living in the Tsar’s
Village.
Later, when I started looking for a new
apartment, I kept a keen eye open for roaches. I was trying my best to get out of the insect mess I was
mired in. After looking at some 15
apartments, I picked one didn’t have any evidence of roaches of any kind. However, once I moved in and came home
the first night and turned on the light while entering the kitchen- Bam! –
three roaches where on the counter scattering away at full speed. It was an off Broadway reenactment of
the mad dash I had grown so used to seeing at the Tsar’s Village. I was crushed.
I soon encountered the little buggers in the
toilet and bathroom (which were separate rooms). The good news was that my new apartment’s infestation was
much more manageable than my previous living arrangements. The roaches at my new place liked the
“water” rooms, so the toilet and kitchen were their zones of comfort, but
unlike the Tsar’s Village, they were quite content staying confined to these rooms
and I rarely saw one venture into the living room or my bedroom. This was definitely a trade up and I
was actually on cloud nine once I realized that there were boundaries that they
largely adhered to. It’s the
little things in life and having my living and sleeping space “roach free”
after being in bug hell was akin to hitting the Powerball jackpot. After a few weeks in my new digs, I
even stopped putting balls of tissue in my ears before bed and a few weeks
after that, the phantom roaches, i.e. the imagined feeling of roaches crawling
on various parts of my body whenever I was home, disappeared. Life was good.
I had a maid back then. One day when I came home to find she
had bought a can of roach killer.
I sprayed it around hoping to inspire the little guys into migrating to
my neighbor’s flat for a day or two.
It didn’t work and they were always in the kitchen and bathroom at
night.
After a little while, I moved a can of roach
killer into the toilet, which was in the hallway next to the kitchen and
sometimes when I would come home drunk from the bars, I’d grab the can before
entering the kitchen, turn on the light and try to spray the roaches before
they disappeared behind the fridge or counter or wherever else they could
squeeze through and out of sight.
It was a weird game of sorts.
Usually, when the light turned on, they would scatter away from the
entrance of the room. I don’t know
if they were wise to the fact that I entered from there or if they were just
going back the way they came, but my “sneak attacks” were not successful and
most of the time they just involved me wildly spraying after their fleeing
footsteps, covering my kitchen counter with roach poison and inhaling a lot of
the fumes myself.
One night however, all this, and, my world along
with it, changed. I’d just finished
a long vodka session and stumbled home at around 3:30 in the morning. I was hungry and wanted something to
eat. At this hour, I knew the
roaches would be comfortably lounging about. To be fair, it was their
time to inhabit the room. Despite
this, I grabbed the roach killer from the toilet and prepared for an
attack. I hit the light and sprang
into the kitchen to find four roaches on the countertop by the sink. They were already high-tailing it out
of there with all of them fleeing toward the wall on the far side of the
kitchen, except one. That poor
bastard ran the wrong way and was coming right at me. I took aim and fired a noxious blast. The aerosol spray hit him right between
the antennae and the widening cloud of fumes engulfed him. Direct hit! He immediately turned around and started heading the other
way. I remember feeling happy and
I may have even yelled, “Got you!” or “Take that!” or something to that
effect. I’d finally gotten one
with the spray head-on, but what happened next was as unexpected as living with
cockroaches in the first place.
I got close and kept my eyes on the roach to see
if I needed to give him another blast.
His comrades were all back in the woodwork by now, so this would be my
only spoil of the battle. However,
he was cooked. After running only
a few inches, his speed slowed dramatically. I watched as his little legs could barely muster another
step and within seconds he stopped cold, his antennae searching frantically in
vain for some answers. Horror rose
up within me like when a child realizes what death is for the first time. The roach then flipped onto his back
and extended his legs up and down twice in a synchronized motion as the poison
overwhelmed his little heart. He
died at that very moment and this little leg extension was the last of his life
leaving his little brownish-red body. I just stared at him, roach killer can in hand,
devastated.
The weight of global injustice came crashing
down on me. This was a very moving
death. Worse, it was at my
hands. I was disgusted with
myself. Who was I to take this
little creature’s life away? What
kind of monster would kill living things so indiscriminately for pleasure? These roaches were just, through no
fault of their own, doing what nature told them to do. My eyes wet with tears with my mind
filled with despair.
I’d never witnessed such an intimate death
before and since it was in slow motion, literally, as the toxins overwhelmed
the poor guy’s system, it packed a clobbering punch. The tissue killings were over immediately and had become a
rote action that didn’t touch me.
This was different. I knew
I was responsible for his suffering before he left this earth. On a broader scale, I now saw how we’re
all roaches, it’s just that some of us have a can of Raid while others are
scrounging in the dark. At my
office, I was the roach, my bosses had the can and they kept using it on me to
slowly chip away at my inner soul.
I made up my mind right then that I would never
willingly kill anything again (excluding food, which I don’t kill, but I
eat). I’ve stuck to that promise
for many years now. I also
accepted that the roaches and I shared the flat and I’d be amicable to
them. I threw out the can of roach
killer and told the maid not to buy another. Soon after, this enlightenment broadened and encompassed all
my actions. If a fly made his way
into my apartment, I would catch him in a glass and let him go free from the
window so he could fly outside. If
it was winter, I’d free any bug I caught in the stairwell so that they wouldn’t
die of cold. Something switched
and I felt closer to all living things.
We all shared the same cosmic energy that bound the universe
together.
I owe that roach a deep debt of gratitude, and
even though I killed him, he saved me in some vague karmic riddle. He opened me to a feeling of
interconnectedness among living things and I found a greater humanity from his tragic
demise. I hope he’s been rewarded
for his sacrifice and is having a blast up in that great roach motel in the
sky.
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