Jagah Dil Mein Honi Chahiye

Caution: This post contains content that is graphic in nature. Reader discretion is advised.

It was a dark and stormy night. Actually, though the night was extremely dark, mainly as a result of me having switched off the bedroom lights, it was not stormy at all, at least not in the 'climatic/weather' sense of the word! It was around midnight, and I had retired for the night. I was lying down peacefully, ruminating on the crazy happenings of the day(all my days are full of crazy happenings, hence the rumination is also a daily, or should I say nightly affair)! The music of Gangster was helping me wash away the day's tiredness as usual, when it happened! Suddenly, in the midst of my 'dreaming', I felt something slither on the bed, jumping from one of my legs to the other! I immediately jumped off the bed and shrugged off the creature, while simultaenously switching on the lights, only to discover... a cockroach. For the sake of reference, let's call him Raj! By this time, Raj was very coolly strolling around on my bed, almost as if claiming it as his own. Now, I am a fairly mild-mannered person, and do not have too many issues with other creatures, but only as long as they leave me alone and do not intrude into my space. I am not sure if Raj understood the implications of his act, but I don't think he got too much time to reflect on his sins or repent them. I picked up the nearest newspaper, swept him away from the bed so that he fell on the floor, and then...(if you are the squeamish kind and are still reading this despite my warning, you still have the option of stopping)... and then, I threw the newspaper on Raj and jumped on it repeatedly, squashing Raj completely in the process! Then, I switched off the light, and tried going back to sleep.

Hardly 5 minutes had passed when I felt something land on my face, and roll around in my hair! By now, I was becoming quite an expert at tackling such threats. Threw it off, jumped up and switched on the lights... and it was only then that I realized what had happened. This new cockroach was actually Simran, the mate of the cockroach that I'd just killed, and had come to take revenge for her husband's murder! I grew up on ichhadhaari naag/naagin(cobras who can change shape to become humans) movies like Nagin, Nagina(Sridevi singing Main Teri dushman, dushman tu mera...) etc. and so I know exactly how this happens. You see, cockroaches, just like snakes, have a photographic memory, literally. When you kill a cockroach, your image gets frozen in his eyes, and when his mate comes and discovers that her guy's been killed, she looks into his eyes and finds out who the killer his. Then, she sets out to take revenge! So here she was...! All this flashed before my eyes in a fraction of a second! So now I had no option but to dispose off Simran also, since she would keep following me to the end of the world for revenge. So I did the only thing I could. Located another newspaper, but Simran was not as naive as her mate. She rushed off and hid amongst the shoes that were lying in a corner. So, I, like an experienced hunter, followed her there, and flushed her out. She ran, but soon got cornered. All I can say in my defence is that she died a quick death!

The only crime of Raj was that he chose to jump all over me when he didn't need to and I didn't need it! Poor Simran's crime was that she loved Raj, more than anything else in the world, so much that she fought a 'giant' for the sake of his memory! May their souls rest in peace.