The Day after Today

Today has been a different day for me for various reasons. There have been many "firsts" for today, starting with the fact that this is my first article in on blogspot in the wake of the blanket ban. Another first is that today is the first time I cleaned my hostel room. (In this month and not in the year!) Also, I killed a spider for the first time in this month. That is another first, considering that I am a peace loving person and I hardly kill any creatures, no matter how disgusting or irritating they are, save for the occasional flies, mosquitoes, ants, termites, all sorts of buzzing insects, insects which hover near the ear and beg for alms to feed themselves and send their children to school, rodents, all slithering creatures, including but not limited to alligators, crocodiles, lizards and the like and people who say "home" when you ask them where they live. As I said, I am a peace loving person.

So, coming back to the cleaning of my room. I don't know why I am saying "coming back" because I wasn't talking about the cleaning of my room in the first place. But I have habit of straying from the topic at hand and as usual I assumed that I had done the same on this occasion and therefore, I thought I'd write a statement about coming back to the topic at hand. So, there I was cleaning my room and feeling good about it, when I saw this spider. Now I am not in the habit of swatting at spiders the moment I see them. It's more of an instinctive reaction to ignore the spider and let it go along its business. I like spiders : they rid the room of the aforementioned insects. But this spider was different, it kept staring at me. As I went around my work of cleaning the room, I noticed two things : One, the room was looking dirtier than when I had started cleaning it and two, I had forgotten that there was a lecture I was supposed to attend at 1100hrs. Since it was already 1300hrs, I decided to give the lecture a miss. Another thing that I noticed was that no matter wherever I was in the room, at least one eye of the spider was always focused on me. Not that I hate attention, but attention of this kind can be unnerving. The next thing I know, the spider could be asking me to marry his daughter.

Spider : "Please marry my daughter. She's a darling and she has eyes only for you!"
Me : "Great! That's all I need. A spider with squinted eyes to be my wife! Thanks, but no thanks!"

Ergo, I was feeling a bit nervous and I was just dreading the moment the spider would make a move and talk about the prospective arachno-human tie up. I knew I could always make up a cock-and-bull story about having to attend the lecture (in case you are wondering why this should be a cock-and-bull story, please go through my attendance records for any theory course that I have signed up for) and make a "clean" getaway from the filthy room. But this spider never made the move. I think he was trying to feel me out; he wanted to see if his prospective son-in-law had enough guts. Apparently, this was some sort of a test of the panache I would display when faced with a difficult situation. I had to do something to be worthy of eight-eyes full of attention! So, I did what any normal, god-fearing, animal loving person would do : I killed the spider. This caused two things : all the eight eyes of the doting daughter rolled in their respective sockets and the mate of the spider I killed came along and dutifully ate the dead one. I am serious : it seems that this particular species of spider was the black widow spider. And the female just stopped short of remonstrating me for doing her job for her. It's a good thing I didn't marry her daughter. Or one fine day, you would have seen all the spiders in Mumbai making a bee-lind for Powai, a la Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The reason would obviously be the feast sponsored by the squint eyed black widow spider!

Enough said about the spider though. My room is clean now and the spiders whose webs I ahd managed to clean have indignantly gone about their work and built themselves new webs, arguably in an effort to spite me. Little do they realise that they are just helping me keep out the insects I hate!