It sounded like
a buzz saw on speed. As I rushed out to our drawing room there he was charging
around like a mad pit bull. A good 2 inches long and just as wide, he was in
the sumo category of bees. Playing dodgem cars with the tubelight. Or like a lover
who refuses to say no, he went straight for it. Wham! Raging left, right, up
down ripping up all the cobwebs in the way. Then thud, landing at the top of
the tubelight wriggling his legs in ecstasy.
I open the
window and he charges straight for me. I am this Don Quixote’s windmills…
I try talking to
him, using all my animal whispering acumen. “Jaba zoo’, “Are you a schiddly?”
“Wuckle kay” are his many responses to my feeble attempts at
bee-traffic-policing. He is either dense. Or too wise to listen. Or just too
bull headed. Or I am too dense? Too erudite? Sooo unbeeish? Or thick-skulled?
I rummage and
find a big brown paper bag. Trying to edge him to the window or catch him and
release him. But this mighty wrestler easily foils my feeble attempts. In
between crashing into every surface, even knocking down a glass painting.
After long
minutes of this kabbadi, when ideas of permanently ending this buzzy fool’s
noisy occupation of our drawing room briefly flits through my more savage end
of the brain, I go back and find a sturdy carboard box. A board. And trap him,
not without a comic Hollywood chase through 3 rooms.
I take him out
and release him into the balcony’s good darkness. But he is disconsolate. We
hear him hammering at our lit windows. He will hug the light or die trying.
It’s an insignificant thing. But it
feels good. One fool bee will live another day. And perhaps because of that
‘the end of days’ pauses a little. No that is too much to expect. The earth
clock ticking towards extinction will not hesitate, but it may smile, a rue
smile as it takes its next step.
By Tarun Cherian
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