Short-lived Partnership : The corporate cockroach (part 2)

To Part 1

I was in a dire need to prove the superiority of the human race over the infamous Cockroaches to that scheming, sitcom mother-in-law kind of Cockroach in my cubicle. They might have gotten away with the dinosaurs but not with us, the Homosapiens. Repeated attempts of provocation from my enemy led me to loose my cool and that could mean only one thing, WAR. Not that I had any consideration for the rules of war then.

All this happened when I actually started getting used to having a cockroach in my cubicle. No Big deal. People actually have dogs and .... cats! Yes, cats! Those furry little beings that don't care one bit for you but need your pillow. The cockroach I thought would actually be fun to have. Maybe he wasn't trying to irritate me and only wanted to be friendly neighbors.

But then he got "Occupational". He started occupying the interiors of my laptop. He sat in there all day, never came out for lunch or snacks no matter whether the fans were whirring or not. I swear he had a whole deluxe suite inside. Not that I minded, God knows what other bugs were already living in.

Then maybe he was bored of the whole indoor thing, he tried to pop out every 5 minutes. Open-minded as I am, it is still hard not being embarrassed when your pet cockroach decides to be the show stopper in every single show of yours. No matter how interesting you are or how much you know about Harry potter, people seem to ignore all that when they see this cockroach. Some people loved him, some detested him. No matter what, he always took the limelight. That is when I decided to draw them, boundaries.

My rules were simple. He could stay any where in my cubicle. My desk phone, cupboards, the dustbin that I never use, the tangled mess of wires, any document, any useless scrap of paper. He would have complete access to all of those. I would stay away from them as much as I could. The only places he would not be allowed to climb upon were my laptop, my chair and my shoes. It seemed to me that we had a mutually beneficial deal, but being the bug that he was, he did not agree.

The pop-up frequency increased and he was in no hurry to get out of my over-heated laptop. I tried to push him away once and almost toppled off. That was the limit. There was no room for diplomacy with this pest. Oblivious to the 20 odd people within hearing distance sitting around engrossed with their own lives and cockroaches, I got fired up and start charging at him mercilessly.

Ah, trying to hide in the most unreachable region between my docking station and laptop will not work this time. I removed  the laptop and unmindful of what happened to it, dropped it somewhere on my desk and kept track of him with such rapid attention.In a last attempt at gallantry, I pushed him off the table and tried to scare him off with my feet. That's when he did the stupidest thing any soldier who was running away from the battle could possibly do, he climbed onto my shoes. Screw Gallantry! With one final shrug of my legs, he was on the carpet again and I with the fury of a fed-up human killed him with my heavy feet.

I turned back to being the civilized me again, the idea that people could actually see me finally dawned upon me. After a minute of useless staring at the monitor, I turned back remembering his earlier deviousness, to confirm that he was indeed dead. And from the site of the battle and postmortem, I write this final account on how I killed my short-lived friendship and got an ugly stain on my shoe.

Making sense

The question after the huge national upraising for the Delhi Brave heart is "Why did this cause such an uproar while other even worse (Not that any of these crimes are in any sense better than the others!) crimes in the rural, sub-urban settings got nothing more than a 5cm x 4cm article in the 10th page of the lesser popular local dailies (if there was no other actor who got a new 1 crore car, of course).
In a society where a tiger is more important than a parakeet, a human is more important than an animal, a guy more important than a girl, it sure makes sense to extrapolate to an educated girl from a metro being more important than a random rag-picker woman or a farmhand. An animated Vanessa in the Bee-Movie to her Boyfriend who tries to kill a bee, says, "Why is his life any less important than yours?". At this point, to stretch democracy to include bees might be over the top, and possibly even Gender equality might be too much to ask for, that is why I ask, why is one girl's life and happiness any less important than any other.
Just in case you think I am trying to write like goody two shoes, I should say being born a fortunate healthy Eight pound, who wasn't dumped in a dustbin, whose parents didn't care one bit if they needed to buy a pink cake or a blue one, who was entitled to 3 or maybe even more meals a day, who cried only because her toys broke, I, like every one of those on-street/on-facebook protesters, condemned the Delhi rape and moved for stricter legislation. And yeah, I never looked beyond the 5 x 4 articles on the third page of my newspaper after that. Unlucky poor them! But not worth my attention.
The wider question on the workings of the society aside, my question to my own insignificant soul is "Why did one incident haunt me for a week while thousands of others won't even spoil my lazy afternoon naps?". Both were random strangers to me, so why the sympathy bias? The point, I realized was that I cared less for the girl whose dreams of a life-time of happiness and small sorrows was quashed than I did for my own safety. It wasn't that I didn't feel bad for her, I certainly did, just as I felt bad for all those unfortunate girls unworthy of media attention or my time. But the reason I put up those posts was that the devil was closer to me. I, who thought I was safe in this world, was left frozen because 'It could have been me'. The advantages I had of a good home, a happy family and a polished set of acquaintances was not enough to make my selfish being feel safe.
This excruciatingly drawn out confession helped me make sense of the world. A few truly unselfish souls aside, we deep down are self-centered egotistic animals.

Imperfection

The human race unknowingly suffers -
Not for the want of rhyme or word
But for the want of un-thought truth.
For a working brain adulterates its form
and carves it into a beautiful elegant lie
Like the wheel that turns clay to a vase.
The world that exaggerates beauty
Clamors over pots and cares not for clay.
An Incident retold becomes a fable
After a hundred lips have had their glory
An epic is born - glamorously perfect
And of humans : Heroes and Villains made.

The Corporate Cockroach

As metaphorical as the this title may seem, it isn't. This is about a Certain cockroach in a corporate office, in my cubicle if you want the details. When I first noticed him (or a her, I am no Roach-ologist), I was in the course of making an incredible discovery that could solve the world food crisis; Alright, I was surfing the internet; aaarghhh, alright, I was facebooking. But that is not what this post is about, it is about Cockroach Jr.

The protagonist is a brown, not completely unfortunate looking insect belonging to the species Jabumba Jabusa (I am in no mood to google a pest's scientific name, to sound intelligent to you). He was the size of three peas together. Imagine small peas, if you please.

All the time, I had learnt about Cockroaches outliving the dinosaurs I didn't believe. I thought the Roach-ologists were seriously confused when they said that. But when I saw Cockroach Jr come to life after my seventeen unsuccessful and three almost successful attempts to murder, I should admit, the dinosaurs with their bird-sized brains didn't have a chance.

The Intelligent patterns the protagonist adopts in his fight for survival and his urge to irritate me are as follows:

1) They move close to things you do not want to disturb. Glasses, Ceramic plates or like in my case, the laptop with a dock so sensitive that a light breeze could disrupt connectivity.

2) They never run in the same direction for long. They keep their movements hard to predict. For example, when you chase an ant and there is a wall, you know it would take one of the three paths (up, left or right) not in the case of the trained GI Joe cockroaches.

3) They look yuck and by the time you make sure that the file you are holding is ok to have a shapeless squiggly stain, they run out of sight.

4) They come taunt you every possible time when they are prepared, so that when they are really unprepared the probability, that you notice that your chances aren't that futile, is low

5) The most important of them all, the smirking face. That lopsided grin (I bet I saw him look up and smirk at me, kinda like Jerry irritates Tom, as I waited for him to get out of the proximity of my laptop) he gives every time he peeps out of the multitude of wires to provoke me! My self-esteem jumps down a cliff, everytime.

I hated them during Zoology labs, I hated them with all the 'Hit' and 'Lakshman Rekha' I could find and now, I hate them because he is no ordinary enemy.

Roach-er that!