“Come quickly,” whispered my husband, looking very excited. I followed him, wondering what got this usually phlegmatic man so worked up. It was a dragonfly. So what, you may ask. Yes, you’ve probably seen dragonflies before but not like this one: all red, purple and pink. As it danced over a dark pink rose, it was difficult to tell where the rose began and where the dragonfly ended.
Living in Anaikatti means being at close quarters with all kinds of creatures. Sometimes too close. Once, we were sitting in my mother-in-law’s office chatting casually. The window was set wide open so that we could enjoy the evening breeze. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a black shape climbing in through the window. I turned to get a better look and froze. It was a large black scorpion with an I-have-a-right-to-be-here attitude.
“Amma, look,” I yelled. She looked at me uncomprehendingly. All I could say was “move” and point at the window. She turned, looked and jumped up from her chair. Unfortunately her way out was past the window. Between our yells and the thuds of books and stuff being flung haphazardly, it turned around and scuttled away. I swear I heard it sniff as it disappeared.
In a place like this, you have to watch where you put your feet. Walking on the grounds of the school, I was rather startled when a dry leaf moved away rather purposefully. A closer look showed that it was an insect. We crouched down and followed it around for a while. Nobody seemed to know what it was. Finally Google came to our rescue: it was a brown leaf insect and here I thought all leaf insects were green.
On warm sunny days, the call of the cricket fills the air; almost seeming to shimmer in the air before me, making me want to reach out and hold it. Once that insistent chirp begins, we would smile and say, “the cricket’s calling” and go back to whatever we were doing. But, one Sunday morning, I decided that I had to see this noisy little fellow. And so we searched and we searched …
It took us a whole hour to spot a little brown protrusion on the branch of the tree we were under. It didn’t look like an insect. “That’s the cricket,” my mother-in-law insisted. “But it looks like an extra knobbly branch,” I said. We would have gone on with this argument endlessly had not the critter suddenly unfurled its feelers. It probably wanted us to go away and leave it to its song.
When night falls, the air is full of bugs of all sizes and colours that seemingly appear out of nowhere. There’s one brown one in particular who makes a beeline for the tube light, buzzes around it for a few minutes and then falls with a splat. He’ll lie there buzzing incoherently for a while and then start bouncing. At first, it’s just practice — just a few inches off the floor — with sound effects. His practice bounces sound like the plops you get when someone chucks a stone into a pond.
Once we hear those plops, we know it’s time to watch out. He gives a whole new meaning to bouncing off the walls. One minute he’s on my shoulder, the next on my son’s head, the third on the ceiling. If he’d stop using us to bounce off from, we’d like him a lot better. “He’s just like you,” I tell a friend who tanks up on sugary stuff and bounces off my chat wall.
Once these bugs come out, the lizards make an appearance. The living room is their smorgasbord. Want a small prickly bug? Join the gang. Prefer a nice plump one? No problem. One small fellow is light golden in colour and has eyes almost popping out of his head at the feast before him. He runs to and fro, stuffing himself till his tummy seems fit to burst. Another looks very delicate. His skin is so transparent that you can see his insides. “Yuck, get away from there,” says my mother-in-law, as I play ‘Spot the lizard’s intestines’ with my son.
There are some colourful skinks around too, but any attempt to chase them is greeted with shouts of “ vesham ma, kitta pogathey ” (it’s poisonous, don’t go near it) from the locals. I try explaining that these little things are non-venomous but all I get are annoyed looks.
There’s one now… excuse me while I run behind it.
