Dear ants - Where are you going?

I was lying on my stomach, my chin resting on folded hands, not doing too much. Just thinking and watching the ants commute in their two-lane highway across the floor. Where are they going? What are they doing? How far had they come? And why? Why?!

Since the beginning there’s been no shortage of household pests in my apartment. Most go about their own business so we’re happy enough to leave each other in peace. With one exception - I’ve had a particularly challenging relationship with the ants.

I’d made a few rookie errors in the beginning leaving the perfect opportunity for invasion. I probably couldn’t have been annoyed at them coming for the honey and dates but was a little more surprised that they also liked oats. (There was something else inedible that they scouted out which had left me particularly perplexed but I’ve since forgotten what it was) In any case I’ve made a note of being exceptionally diligent when it comes to leaving food vulnerable to assault. Food lives in individual stacked containers. Which results in an added feeling of pleasant contentedness when I stare at my shelves, like I did an outstanding job with that one. I wash my dishes as soon as they’re done – all I had to overcome here really was a little bit of laziness. And sweep my floor with a regularity that would probably be little closer to what would be considered acceptable. There’s still room for improvement.

Alas, the ants kept coming. I’ve had ants everywhere. They’ve found their way into my water dispenser and into my kettle. I discovered this one-day staring for a while down into my cup of tea. I remember thinking, “Hmmm.. that’s inconvenient,” and drinking it anyway. At another point I’m sure there was a nest in my laptop – why else would they be marching from the ventilation slots at the back? But the one that equally entertains as it does not – I’ve even had ants in my pants. With all this I’ve basically accepted that ants, like dodgy plumbing and sleeping on the floor, are a part of my life here.

Until I couldn’t sleep on the floor. I could feel them crawling over me as I slept but decided to ignore them – if I attempted anything they’d bite and I had no better alternatives that night. I don’t know if it was the ants or something else, but under coincidental circumstances I awoke with an unquantifiable amount of bites covering the backs of my legs. What ensued was an extremely uncomfortable few days comforted only by frequent applications of Tiger Balm. So I started sleeping on a hard, green metal cot that you might expect to be the only furniture in a solitary confinement cell. I could still feel them crawling over me in the night although I could no longer tell if they were real ants or phantom ants; a manifestation of my ongoing preoccupation.

One night halfway between the sleeping and waking world a sharp sting just above my left eye yanked me from my semi-conscious state. I yelped. (Because that’s exactly what it was) In my vagueness, when I finally worked out what had happened, all I could think was, “Really?” I calculated what I could possibly do and with no solutions or better options I let myself slip back into sleep. Awaking in the morning I could feel something was up. A haze blurred my mind, and to my surprise, my vision. The mirror revealed someone who looked like they’d been up all night on the booze and had either gotten in a scuffle or fallen headfirst into something on their return home. Knowing my luck it would probably have been the latter.

I desperately wanted to go back to sleeping on the floor. I even more desperately needed an uninterrupted nights sleep. I could feel the accumulating fatigue creep over me and was becoming increasingly annoyed at trivial incidences. The comedy series, which is my ant problem, is well known in the office. “Oh yeah they’re still there,” I reply casually every day when I’m asked how they’re going. I’ve been recommended to use a range of chemicals, to which I have a strong reluctance, and to purchase an ant-eater by a guy who I’d previously not given enough comedic credit – regarding him as unimaginative and boring.

Google thankfully revealed some alternatives (I’ve no idea where I’d find an ant eater – neither did my colleague). Alternative one: petroleum jelly at the source. Simple enough but in my case I’d tracked them every-which-way across the apartment and there really didn’t seem to be a source. Two: create your own ant trap. All right! En principio this one had some appeal. I imagined myself creating some elaborate rat-esque trap and retreating to the corner to watch my brilliance unfold. Further reading revealed that this technique was no more than honey laced with borax – lame. Later on my way home I passed the store armed with a list of items for alternative three: natural remedies.

Vinegar, lemon, turmeric, eggshells, cinnamon sticks and garlic topped the handwritten note titled “ANT REPELLENT!” appended at the bottom of the days’ work to-do items. At my place I left no natural-remedy ritual unperformed. I completed a first sweep, cleaned with lemon and vinegar, created demilitarised zones of turmeric powder and scattered cinnamon sticks and garlic across the heavier worn travel paths. In the madness I felt like a witchdoctor crossed warlord as I executed my counteroffensive. I stood back with hands on hips and nodded – well if this doesn’t work then.. well, I decided I’d cross that bridge when I we got to it.

At first the results were promising. When I returned home from the weekend away there were no visible signs of return. But the ants aren’t gone. They’re still here.

Today I noticed though that they’ve changed their path. No longer do they forge across the middle of the room, instead they cling to the walls and side-skirts. Mercifully my designated sleeping zone is no longer obtruded. At first I thought I was going for extermination – a zero tolerance approach. On reflection this was highly unrealistic. So instead I’ll re-frame my perspective and go for acceptance and happy co-existence. The ants, like dodgy plumbing and sleeping on the floor, will continue to be highlights of my continuing Indian residency.

Where’d the lights go?

I’m standing on my terrace when suddenly everything is swallowed by darkness. But still the math’s classes continue on the opposite terrace – the tutor seemingly unaware that students can no longer see the lesson he is presenting.

We’re without power for the 3^rd or 4^th time today. I can’t remember which. Power cuts have been happening more frequently and at sporadic time intervals. I’ve learned to boil the kettle before 7am when the power disappears for the first time for about 2 hours. Then I’m sure to put in a few good hours at work on my laptop to make the most of the morning power and a fully charged battery. The power usually cuts out again early afternoon and I’ll work until the battery indicator in the top right corner of the screen flashes red for a conveniently timed lunch break. Later in the afternoon I’ll wander to the guy selling tea at the corner – who by now knows I like my chai in a glass with no sugar – when I’m bored of working at 10% screen brightness and I’m threatened to save my work alas we’re forced into back-up battery mode.   

Back at home there’s not much I can’t do without the power - I can still complete my third-world washing workout (for better results I prefer to handwash to punk rock); my bucket shower feels a little more romantic to candlelight and the neighbours can’t see me hang out my washing on the terrace in the nude. Although I’ve thought about what would happen if the power suddenly comes back on so I make sure I’m back inside well before the strike of the hour when this is likely to happen.

Navigating my way up the two and a half flights of stairs in the dark has been an adventure when returning home during a blackout. Leaving in the darkness I don my trusty headtorch - quite pleased reflecting on the amount of times it’s paid to have had it stashed in my backpack; exploring abandoned asylums, navigating the to-be-discovered loot of a back-alley dumpster and navigating off a rock-climbing route we’ve started much too close to sunset. When I go downstairs the hostel ‘madam’ and her daughter crackup laughing, pulling the light from my head and take turns illuminating various objects as they pan their heads around the room – not yet aware of the necessity to keep your head down if you’re not wanting to blind someone.

In the streets people come out of their homes. They sit out front on the ground or their doorsteps if they have them. It’s usually too hot to be inside and the kitchen quickly becomes a sure-fire ‘no go zone’ without fan aided air circulation. Neighbours talk – mostly about family, familiar faces are greeted as they pass and the children continue to play until their mothers eventually coax them back to the house for dinner.

My neighbor seems a little more bothered by the lack of electricity. She asks me how I can sleep. I’m a little confused at first as to why I wouldn’t be able to sleep without power but come to understand that the trusty old pedestal fan is a sure way to a good night sleep undisturbed by heat and mosquitos. I’m glad I’ve grown accustomed to the heat and grin imagining my super-mosquito-net-setup back in my room.

I wander up the street to dine in one of my local haunts – a small concrete room, a quarter of the size of my bedroom, with a rolling garage door opening to the street. A candle, 4 stainless steel tumblers and a bucket of South Indian dahl are the only items to sit on the table in front of me. The place is modest with two plastic tables, the kind that occupy the surrounds of your local public swimming pool, and 8 matching plastic chairs. There’s a singular sink in the corner and a wooden table spaced far enough out from the wall for someone to stand behind. On it are 2 buckets of chutney – one coconut and one tomato – and an insulated container of steamed fermented lentil-rice flour cakes.

My dinner is served on a banana leaf – which I’m careful adhere to Tamil custom and rinse down with a little water first – and I eat with my right hand receiving an approving nod for my efforts. People come and go; buying banana leaf and newspaper wrapped parcels to take back home or preferring to sit in. The patrons are mostly male and sit on the table that I’m not occupying – it’s not customary for men and women to sit together. However, in the past I’m sure I’ve sat down next to a guy unaware of the social faux par I was making.

The fluorescent light tubes, affixed at the corners where the walls meet the roof, flash a few times before abruptly filling the space with a bland white light. It’s hardly a mood for enlightenment and suddenly a little of the slow-paced, power-out magic is lost.

Back at home I don’t turn the lights on, even though I can, preferring to opt for half a dozen candles instead. I retreat hastily to my mosquito-net fort with my current book ‘Namesake.’ Mispronouncing, phonetically as the Tamils would do, the first two weeks I had it. I don’t extinguish the candles - they’ll burn themselves out in a couple of hours when I’ve probably done the same.