NEW IND PRESS (Chennai, India) 16 July 08 Where there are lizards, there you need men (Billo Rani)
One is usually reminded, in times of distress, of what one’s mother used to say, and why she was right. My moment of realisation came while I was trying to take a bath, last week. Ma says it is important to have somebody in your life, by which she meant, a man in the house.
With an obstinate lizard in the bathroom, I had to concede that she had a point. Lizards are creepy. Their creepiness is rooted in the fact that they are, well, creepy. They soft-foot it all around your house, silently, watchfully, and have the ability to go up walls and stick to ceilings and they can move really, really fast. I’ve heard it is not a bad thing, having house lizards.
They actually help in pest-control, and God knows there’s enough food for them around here. Nevertheless, I can’t relax around a lizard and if I cannot shoo it out of one room, I myself go and sit in another. That morning, I simply had to take a bath and rush off to work. But there they were in the bathroom. Two of them, their heads nearly touching.
When I switched on the light, one of them streaked off in a panic but the other one just sat there in a corner, eyes wide open. I stamped at it. It did not move. I made clicking noises with my tongue. It did not move. I picked up the wiper and cautiously poked in its general direction. It still didn’t move.
I couldn’t bring myself to actually hit it with the wiper, and was also starting to wonder if it was dead. So I tossed some water near where it was lying. It finally moved, about one-thirtieth of an inch. It just shuddered, actually, as if awaiting a terrible fate.
I stood there, clutching my bath-robe to my neck, wishing there was a man in the house to sort this problem out (no woman I know would go anywhere near lizards).
I wondered whether the lizard was stupid — did it imagine that by not moving from its place, it was protecting itself? Hiding? Or was it hurt? Were the two lizards having a fight in the dark and did I walk in just when this one fell on the floor, damaged? Could it move at all?
Finally, I took a deep breath and had my bath, lizard notwithstanding. However, I didn’t let it out of my sight for even five seconds. Even while washing my face, I carefully kept one eye cocked for the slightest movement from that corner, although I’m not sure what I was afraid of — it couldn’t do much besides run, could it?
When I finished my bath, I left it there, switched off the light, and feeling sorry for it, even wished it a ‘get well soon’ in case it was hurt. By evening, it was gone. And with it, my momentary wistfulness about needing a man around the place was gone too.
Where there are lizards, there you need men