Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings

by Kuzhali Manickavel

  “Bury it,” said the mailman so Seshadri went to the back and buried it, placing a drooping red shoeflower on top of the freshly-turned soil. The next morning it was back in front of the bakery, complete with the tie, banana spiders and the centipede.

  “Oh dear,” said Seshadri because he was afraid something like this might happen.

  “Keep it,” said the mailman.

  “But I don’t want it. You take it.”

  “I don’t want it either.”

  Seshadri put it back in the middle of the road and decided to pretend it wasn’t there.

  •

  Right before Ezekial had disappeared, he had turned and waved at Seshadri, who was standing at the bus stop. Ezekial had walked up to him, wearing three old coats, two pairs of trousers and a collection of ties around his head. Hanging around his neck was a black shoe and a brown boot.

  “Do you like it?” asked Ezekial, sticking out his wrist. He had covered it with silver foil from a cigarette pack. “My new watch.”

  “Very nice. What time is it?” asked Seshadri.

  Ezekial frowned at his wrist, shook it out and then pressed it to his ear.

  “It’s o’clock time,” he said with a grin.

  “Won’t you lend it to me?”

  “No,” said Ezekial, shaking his head.

  “Give me a tie then.”

  “No, I need them.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.” Ezekial began to carefully count the ends of the ties, then his fingers and his ears.

  “Give me your shoe.”

  Ezekial frowned thoughtfully and nodded.

  “I’ll do one thing. I’ll give you a tie and shoe when I’m finished.”

  Ezekial began striding away, bobbing up and down like he was wading through waist-deep water. Then he turned, waved at Seshadri and vanished.

  •

  For a while, people wondered where Ezekial had gone. Sometimes they would lounge in front of the bakery, musing about the logistics of being hit by a bus or getting bitten by a snake.

  “What do you think Seshadri?” they would say and Seshadri would shrug.

  “Maybe he just disappeared,” he would say. Most people would chuckle at this but a few would nod as if it was entirely possible.

  Once a week, Seshadri would slowly walk the road where he had seen Ezekial disappear. He would frown at the cracks and poke at them with his toe, his head slightly averted in case something happened. Sometimes he would tramp along the sides, looking for a brown boot or one of Ezekial’s old coats. Once he found something that looked like the end of a tie—he was about to pick it up when someone passed and asked what he was doing. He came back for it a few days later but by then it was gone.

  One year, when the rains had been very heavy, the roads flooded and water the colour of strong coffee flowed past the bus stop. Men crowded around the entrance of the bakery, moodily chewing on buns, giving a running commentary on the debris that floated past. A bright blue door gently wafted along the brown water and four men rushed out to save it because there was nothing better to do. A dog was pulled from the water only to die a few hours later behind the bakery. A stout black pig swam stubbornly upstream and looked like a tiny black island in the water. After unsuccessfully trying to pull it to safety, the men hooted and egged the pig on.

  “That’s the way! Keep going, keep going!”

  Seshadri stood with them, watching rotted sticks, plastic bags and dried coconuts float past. Then he saw a strip of silver foil skipping along the surface of the murky water. It was curved like a sloppy half-moon, like someone had molded it to their wrist, pointed at it and said it was o’clock time.

  “There!” shouted Seshadri. A young man who was very keen on saving something from the flood was already in the water, his trousers rolled above his knee.

  “What?” said the young man. “Who? Who?”

  “There!” said Seshadri. His right leg was in the water though he hadn’t rolled up his trousers yet. He felt something warm and gentle touch his foot, then slither away. The sun slid onto the horizon from under a thick cloud and the coasting, brown water seemed to flow into a sheet of blinding, white light.

  “Who?” called the young man. “What was it? What did you see?”

  Seshadri squinted at the horizon then took another step forward. The water seemed to be encrusted with a crumpled layer of silver foil. He stared at it, feeling his eyes water and burn.

  “It was nothing,” he said, wading back to the side of the road.

  “It must have been something,” said the young man. “Something must have made you come charging into the water like that.”

  “No, it was a mistake,” said Seshadri heading back into the bakery. “I didn’t see anything.”

  •

  Ezekial Solomon’s shoe was now sitting in the middle of the road, pointing towards the bus stop like someone had left it behind in mid-sprint. Seshadri’s plan to pretend it wasn’t there worked in sporadic fits and starts. He angled his chair away from the road and arranged a few jars of butter biscuits to obscure his vision. Then he suddenly found himself wandering towards the entrance, stretching and shaking out his legs, his eyes immediately latching on to the shoe. He went back to his table and read the paper twice, then struck up a conversation with a patron who turned out to be partially deaf but had a zest for talking nonetheless.

  Sometime during the afternoon, a well-meaning citizen picked up the shoe and tossed it to the side of the road. It landed right in front of Iyengar’s Bakery; Seshadri looked at it, rubbed his face and sighed. He picked up the shoe and knocked out the centipede and banana spiders.

  “Don’t come back,” he said, as he watched them scuttle away into cracks in the ground.

  He kept the shoe under his table, beside an old biscuit tin that had rusted shut. Every so often, he would tap it with the side of his foot, to make sure it was still there.

  We Are Honoured By Your Journey

  You have reached the heaviest place on earth—a fine, upstanding building filled with exploding women, bordered by courageous trees. Please be alert. The third-floor residents like to throw things out the window. It smells because that’s what happens when you put InsideOut women and UpsideDown women under the same roof. They expand and contract, poke into corners, stretch into the floor. They get squished against each other, rupture and bleed, overflow and dry up. They have a tendency to ignite because that is the elemental nature of exploding women. They also love to dance and clap their hands.

  Rubber Band Girls and Super Queens

  “So where were you yesterday?” asks Rudra. Rudra is a repeat customer. She began as an ordinary Rubber Band Girl, stretching and sighing, screaming and soiling herself. A few weeks ago she was crowned Super Queen after she jumped the wall and ran to the bus stop with slices of glass stuck in her heel. This conclusively proved that she would expand and contract until she finally snapped.

  “Do you think you are very beautiful?” she asks. Last Saturday, Rudra insisted that you were very beautiful but Super Queens have a set of rules that are subject to change without notice. Rudra doesn’t mind drinking your abandoned coffee either, even though it’s been sitting there for the last hour and is covered in red ants. She stirs it with her finger and you wonder if the ants aren’t biting her or perhaps she just doesn’t feel them.

  “I don’t think you’re beautiful,” she continues thoughtfully. “I can see your arrogance all over your face. And your mouth is crooked. You’re not beautiful at all.”

  You wish Rudra was on the third floor, soaked with meds, her mouth hanging open like an empty bag. She smiles at you and takes a sip of your coffee. You watch the ants swarm around her lips and wonder if they aren’t biting her or perhaps she just doesn’t feel them.

  Chemical Candy

  Dr. J.J. Shiv Shankar wears his black silk shirt to work because he wants everyone to know that he’s a Dancing Machine. He likes it when he walks in and the girls smile apprecia
tively and sing “Jai Jai Shiva Shankar, Kaanta Lage Na Kankar”. It gives him a chance to wiggle his thin hips in the reception area. He is very resourceful and likes to try new things, especially free samples. His crowning achievement is the blue tablets that made all the exploding women walk backwards.

  “It was very clear,” he will tell you, “that they wanted to move forwards. But for some reason, they kept walking backwards, even though they had their arms outstretched, like they really, really wanted to move forwards.”

  There Once Was a Girl Named

  The phone rings and you pick it up because you’re the only one here and you’re bored.

  “There’s a crazy person at the Chetpet bus stand.”

  “Ma’am we can only help if it’s a woman—”

  “Yes! Yes, she’s a woman and she’s spitting at people and lifting up her sari and she’s got worms crawling out of her arm and she’s spitting—”

  “Has she been violent?”

  “She’s spitting! For God’s sake, she spat on my foot, she—”

  “Do you know how long she’s been there?”

  “I don’t know, I—can’t you come? Can’t you take her?”

  “Do you think you could stay near her, just till we get there?”

  “What if she spits at me again?”

  An hour later a girl who looks like a broken stick is sitting across from you, having the maggots removed from her arm.

  “Name?” you say, as you start a new file.

  “Didn’t say,” says the attendant girl.

  “Where’s she from?”

  “Didn’t say. She didn’t say anything. Let’s name her something, how about Reshma? Just for now, R-E—”

  “We’ll call her Minnal.”

  “Minnal? Minnal…ok, Reshma Minnal then.”

  “Minnal Reshma.”

  “Ok…” says the attendant, though she really doesn’t think much of the name Minnal.

  Hi Everybody! My Name’s Marcus!

  Marcus came from America last week, armed with enthusiasm and a backpack of bottled water. Nobody is sure why he is here but he has a PowerPoint presentation and a file folder. Marcus is not as enthusiastic as he used to be because it’s so damn hot, his skin is peeling and he has already had two cases of food poisoning. Worst of all, somebody, most likely Rudra, has stolen all his water bottles. Today however he has a plan. He is going to get organized, create modules and have something done by the end of the day.

  “So, is there a computer I could use around here?” he asks.

  “There’s this one,” you say, stifling a yawn.

  “Great, could I—”

  “It shuts down every five minutes though.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Marcus is momentarily deterred but only momentarily. He grins and shows you his very white, very straight teeth.

  “Why don’t you let me try anyway, I’m good with computers.”

  You move but don’t get up because Marcus can only have the computer, not the chair. You put your head down, pretending to catch up on some much needed sleep while Rudra quietly stations herself behind Marcus. She is fascinated by his blonde hair and the way his skin turns pink when he goes out in the sun. You count off the seconds with small taps of your hand, hear the telltale beep and open one eye to see Marcus staring in disbelief at the screen.

  “What the—” he says. You notice Rudra is smiling because whatever Marcus just said sounded exactly like otha, the Tamil word for fuck.

  “Otha,” says Rudra with a bright smile and Marcus turns to her.

  “Hey!” says Marcus.

  “Otha!” says Rudra.

  “Yeah, what the hell, eh?” he says pointing at the computer.

  “Otha nayee!1” says Rudra. “Otha Marcus!”

  “Yeah, Marcus wants to know what the hell is going on with the computer!”

  “Otha thevidiya payan!2” she says, clapping her hands.

  “What the hell, eh?” says Marcus. “What the hell?”

  Rudra starts shouting “Otha!” repeatedly at the top of her lungs and has to be physically removed. Marcus doesn’t understand what has happened.

  “What’s the big deal? We were just—OH FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!” says Marcus as the computer beeps quietly and reboots.

  We’ll Send You a Postcard When We Get There

  In an obscenely expensive coffee house near the heart of the city, Dr. J.J. is buying you and Marcus lattes because Marcus didn’t believe lattes existed in Chennai.

  “It’s alright,” says Marcus. “Not like the ones in New York. You should have a latte in New York.”

  “I’ll do that the next time I go there,” you say and Dr. J.J. smirks into his Madras filter coffee.

  “Guess who took off yesterday,” he says.

  “Rudra.”

  “Nope. Maggot Girl.”

  You remember she shuffled her feet and spat if you came too close. You wonder if she will get maggots again.

  “She had a name…,” you say and Marcus suddenly looks up from his latte.

  “Min..nie..Ray,” he says. “Mini Ray… man.”

  You think of what happens to broken girls whose eyes cannot focus and who pee on their feet. Marcus suddenly slams his hand down on the table.

  “It was Krishna. Mini Krishna.”

  Two days later news arrives that Maggot Girl has been found completely naked and completely dead by the side of the highway. It is only when you open her file that you remember what her name was.

  Inhale. Exhale.

  You are sitting in a corner, practicing how to breathe—inhale, exhale, inhale. It’s been one week since Rudra the Super Queen made her trimillionth escape. Minnal Reshma has been cremated and Marcus has been given a plastic replica of the Taj Mahal as a farewell present. They are beginning to fade like faces in a burning photograph and you think that maybe it’s the weight around here that makes people sink. You feel a thickening spread over your blood vessels, your lungs, your bones. You wish you could remember what Minnal’s hands looked like, whether her ears were pierced. You wish that maggots would stay out of people’s arms and that everyone knew how to close their mouths.

  You walk over to the window, stick your head out as far as you can and you inhale.

  You exhale.

  1 “Fucking dog!”

  2 “Fucking prostitute’s son!”

  We have been falling for two weeks, three days, seventeen hours and forty-seven minutes.

  “Keep your eyes peeled boys; eyes peeled!”

  The crew is very helpful. They keep our windows clean, point out things of interest, remind us to take out our cameras and say cheese. When we all say “Oh!” they always smile, like they completely understand us. So far everything has been real swell.

  “What’s the report, boys? What’s the report?”

  It’s the Captain who’s been driving my companion crazy. Initially, when the Captain said “Keep your eyes peeled boys,” my companion would smash his nose against the window so I couldn’t see a thing. When the Captain said “What’s the report?” his hand would shoot up and he would say “Oh-oh! Oh me! Pick me!” Initially he thought the Captain was a swell guy. Now the Captain makes him gnash his teeth and say “Jesus Christ, what the hell? What does he think this is? Is he for real? What the hell?” This strain has unsettled his stomach and frayed his nerves. Even if he thinks a tiny gnashing thought, it undoes him completely.

  “C’mon boys, what’s the report? Tell it like you see it boys, keep your eyes peeled!”

  There is a wheeze, a pop and my companion’s tooth lies on my lap in a pool of jellied blood. I pick it up and give it back to him. He swallows it sadly and I hear the clink and settle as it joins the rest of his teeth at the bottom of his stomach.

  “Say, why don’t you take out your camera?” I say in an effort to cheer him up. “C’mon, take a look at that colour. Just look at that.”

  The outside is breaking and streaking in
purple, blue, orange and green. The crew points and a group of voices say “Oh!” because it’s just like the brochure, the commercial and what everyone said it would be like. The crew smiles and nods.

  “Look, red! Did you see the red? You should have taken a picture,” I say.

  My companion shakes his head and sighs. It’s no good.

  “Tell me a story,” he says. “Tell me about that girl you were lonesome for.”

  A thick streak of white shoots past the window and somebody in the back hoots and whistles.

  “Well I started feeling lonesome for her after she died. So I brought her home and she wailed, right?”

  “Yeah,” says my companion with a yawn.

  “So she kept wailing—wouldn’t stop until I gave her something to eat. Then she stopped. Then she was quiet and everything was beautiful.”

  “Is that the end?”

  “No.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She ate my watch.”

  “Look alive there boys, look alive!”

  A thick smudge of black pours across the windows and a chorus of groans echo from behind. The crew still smiles, as if they understand our disappointment and wish they could do something about it.

  “You should’ve taken that picture,” I say. “Red is a very rare thing to see nowadays.”

  My companion wheezes as the lights dim. The crew scuffles and sweeps, their eyes peeled like luminous pearls, their smiles glowing like tiny white worms.

  Even as a child, Stalin Rani bore a striking resemblance to brown wrapping paper. Her body was flat and foldable, her face littered with creases that curled into different shapes when she stood in the sun. Her birth had been celebrated with the bursting of four small firecrackers, three of which never went off.

  She began life by crawling along the sagging walls of her house, poking her toes into corners and listening to her father climb the ranks of the local Communist Party. In the afternoons she sat under a table and assigned colours and shapes to the different voices she heard. Some were dark grey and hard like wet cement. Others were oily and brownish-orange like stale halva.