It’s time to be prepared to face an invasion, not by foreign troops, but by locusts (tiddi), the big-headed, ogre-eyed insects that breed in north and east Africa, particularly along the Nile, and in the Sahara desert. They wing their way to Sindh, where they breed again, before invading parts of Pakistan and India. The last great locust invasion took place in 1993 and now, after 26 years, another one looms large by mid-monsoon time. Both India and Pakistan held an emergency meeting to tackle the menace.
Though historical references are hard to find, there were locust invasions during the Mughal period and earlier too. The late A.S. Kochhar, who was president of the Mayapuri RWA and was conversant with the oral history of the Khalsa Panth, had this to say about it: During the reign of Mohd Farukhsiyar (1713-1719), when the Mughal emperor was pursuing the Sikh general, Banda Bahadur, there was a locust invasion in Sindh and parts of Rajputana and Punjab which led to a severe famine in these places and devastated the peasantry.
Perhaps the biggest comparatively recent locust invasion took place during the World War years in 1944. The northern sky in Delhi became completely black in the late afternoon as huge locust swarms (more massive than Chingez Khan’s hordes) raided the Capital from Rajputana and Punjab. At Agra, the locusts covered the whole façade of the Taj Mahal, though it was protected from their droppings, by the scaffolding that had been put up ostensibly for repairs but actually to protect the monument from the German war planes. there was a warning for those, but there was no warning for the locust invasion.
Horror in the Old City
I remember that as the swarm of trillions of the insects (as big as tadpoles) invaded Delhi, the whole of the Jama Masjid area turned black as the sun was completely hidden too. In Bazar Matia Mahal, people took up whatever they could to fight the insects spreading the fear of famine. One boy returning home from the madrasa used his “takhti” (wooden slate) to beat down as many insects as he could. A vegetable vendor took off his lungi or loincloth to attack the pest, unmindful of the fact that he was left wearing only his underwear in a very conservative area. Haji Mian Faiyazuddin (of the Haji Hotel), then a schoolboy, was encouraged by his father, Zahooruddin, to kill as many as he could while the old man himself used his walking stick for the purpose.
Elsewhere, Aftab, son of Ahmed Sayeed Khan, ex-Deputy Superintendent of Police, Jodhpur State, took out his badminton racket to bring down umpteen locusts while running up and down on the terrace of Sayeed Manzil. Meanwhile his father, who had fought some of the most notorious dacoits in Rajputana, brandished a broomstick for the purpose, while Capt. Peter Foster of the Central Ordnance Depot, going to the British club in the Cantonment, used his tennis racket to smack down the intruders.
Combating the menace
The priests of the Sacred Heart Cathedral asked the parishioners to go out and kill locusts, mentioned in the Bible as having been among the Seven Plagues of Egypt that caused widespread famine. In Fatehpur Sikri and its surrounding villages,the kisan leader, Ram Singh, a thick-set ex-wrestler, petitioned the British Government to come to give the farmers financial assistance and waiving the taxes they had to pay. The regional Commissioner responded wholeheartedly.
Ram Singh later came to Delhi and made a round of the newspaper offices, seeking publicity to highlight the plight of the farmers. One of the editors, Philip Crosland, asked the moffusil correspondent in Agra (my father) to assess the damage at Sikri and file a detailed report with pictures. In the end Ram Singh was satisfied with the government response and the farmers were adequately compensated, even as thousands of the locusts killed lay rotting in the fields, making plentiful food for kites and crows. Locust, curried and fried, was the favourite new item on the menu!
All this comes to mind whenever there’s a threat of a locust invasion that can cause more damage than even a drought. The teeming insects can make a field ripe with corn barren in a just few minutes. Hope then that the impending invasion passes without causing extensive damage, because of vastly improved locust-control measures. Sadly, people like Aftab Ahmed, Ram Singh and Capt Foster won’t be around to squash tiddi, though Haji Mian is still fit to encounter them when the sky darkens thicker than monsoon clouds.
The writer is a veteran chronicler of Delhi
