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Spice of Life | Rats! Encounter with a sneaky intruder
A Haryanvi friend joked that rats of the area got attracted by the aroma of ghee so I should dip a piece of chapati in it and set the trap. It worked! The next morning the intruder was sitting foxed inside
When I was around three, my mother made me learn the alphabets emphasising upon sounds: A for apple, b for boy, c for cat….r for rat and looking at the pictures my child mind would wander and imagine a cat meowing and I would wonder what sound the rat made. So, I asked mother and she told me the rat was a disciple of Lord Ganesha and it squeaks.
As I grew up, my curiosity about rats grew and one fine day I asked my science teacher the difference between a mouse and a rat. She gave me a quizzical look and said: “Both are almost the same, however, the rat is larger than the mouse. The rat has a thick and heavy tail, whereas the mouse has a thin one. Both are carriers of disease and transmit it through bites of parasites found on rats or by contaminating food.”
I was terribly scared and I had nightmares of rats jumping on my bed! The next morning, I asked father who told me that the most historically dangerous rat-borne disease was the bubonic plague that devastated Europe, killing up to 200 million people between 1346-53. I was even more petrified as he told me how western Europeans thought of rats as creatures bringing darkness, desolation, disease and death.
The fear of rats lurked in the back of my mind for years.
After post-graduation, I went to university to do M.Phil and was allotted a cubicle in a hostel. I was trying hard to adjust to the new life away from home when one fine day as I returned from the department and opened the door of the room, I was shocked to see a rat jump from the bed and leap into the cupboard. I let out a shriek and scooted to my friend Nidhi’s room. When I told her about the rat, she burst out laughing before pacifying me by saying that by now the rodent would have fled to someone else’s room.
I gingerly stepped into my room, hoping Nidhi was right. But how wrong we were! There it was behind the books on the shelf before disappearing under the bed.
Three days passed by and I kept shifting from one friend’s room to another. It appeared as if I was the intruder in room number 38 and the rat was the de facto resident. Then on the suggestion of my friends, I bought a rat trap and put a bread slice inside. The next morning, I found the trap empty, mocking at me.
A Haryanvi friend joked that rats of the area got attracted by the aroma of ghee so I should dip a piece of chapati in it and set the trap. Wow! It worked for the next morning I found the intruder sitting foxed inside. My joy knew no bounds. I immediately called the watchman, who took the rat trap to a distant field and left it there. My room was mine again after five days! Fortunately, during my stay in the hostel that year, I never came across a rat in my room again. But till date, the nightmarish experience makes me shudder whenever I hear the word rat.
Some people keep rats as pets and love them and some like me can’t stand them, but the fact is the rat race survives, and thrives, because this planet belongs to all. Rats know when to stay quiet and when to squeak. Meanwhile, my fear of rats and the rat race is perennial and remains the same by the millennial.
ritukumar.gmn@gmail.com
The writer is an associate professor in English at MLN College, Yamunanagar
