DECCAN HERALD (Decca, India) 21 April 08 Slimy lizards (Girija Madhavan )
It is a mystery how the miniaturised dragons often target those who hate them the most.
A lizard fell on your shoulder?” gasped Kempamma, eyes wide with alarm.
“You must consult the almanac, Palli Sastra, take a bath and light a ghee lamp to undo the evil effects,” she insisted. Kempamma cooks for us and her word is law.
A naturalist said that the once mighty dragon has become the timid lizard hiding behind a painting or a pelmet. Yet, some people are superstitious about lizards, while others like me have a “Sauro-phobia” and cannot abide by them. My dislike of lizards goes back to a childhood incident when a chameleon climbed up my back and our eyes met over my shoulder in a nightmarish interlocking of glances.
Lizards extricate themselves from tricky situations by losing their tails which wriggle and writhe and arc away on the floor with a grisly volition of their own, while the tail-less owners scamper off to safety.
They haunt those who dislike them the most. A friend in our guest room screamed when a lizard jumped from her handbag and on to the window frame where it crouched in a Saurian reverie. They fall into smooth-sided sinks or trap themselves in pedal bins, shoot up like rockets from behind old-fashioned geyser switches.
The worst lizard encounter I ever had was when I was driving a car in the middle lane of a long, busy bridge. I suddenly saw a big lizard on the windshield. After the initial panic, I saw it was on the outside, closed all the windows tight and watched in horrid fascination as it paced the wiper, inches from my face. When we came to a halt 15 kilometres away, I had to be rescued from the car as it had vanished from the windshield and was perched just above the driver’s door, poised to fall on me.
I may just have the last laugh after all. A smartly dressed young salesman was handing out some patter at my door. As I was about to send him away, I heard him say, “lizard”. He was selling a small electronic device that emits a soft ticking sound which lizards do not like at all. So for Rs 100, I have a cure for my phobia and a talisman against “Godzillas”.
Slimy lizards