I was working from home today and while sitting on my bed doing so, I notice something dark, small and oblong'ish speck on it. My heart leapt up and had this most horrendous thought - what ...is that a bed bug?? No not again...please God!! Thats when this line came to my head - Old habits die hard, but old fears die harder!! - and now this blog post...
One would wonder what is to be so scared of a measly little thing like a bug. But hey, bed bug to all its credit is no small mite! (Indeed, it is a mighty mite.) And I, to my credit, am not that easily scared of tiny little things (well, not most ...ok ok..just cockroaches. And for all you *smart* readers, lizards are not insects, and now I am digressing!)
We had a bad case of bed-bugs which started 2 years ago and lasted almost a year long! The origins are still a mystery. The infestation started in one bedroom occupied by my BIL and Paati (so, were our parasitical visitors from the hospital or from the lovely BMTC buses??). It took Amma to figure out that something was ticklishly crawling over her when she used that bed one rare night. Next morning, she moved the sheets and our small dark lovelies were running around, like how the villagers of Ramgarh ran when Gabbar (and/or his henchmen) came into the village.
At first, Amma was the most worried and I was like yeah-whatever-these-are-just-bugs-and-will-go-away, but there was some growing up to do on my part I guess! Never had seen bed-bugs before and had heard about them (like 'oh-that-theater-it-has-bugs' and in the famous parody of Kishore Kumar 'Dheere se jaana kathiyan mein re kathmal...'), I was curious to see how they looked and was even amused that we had them in our house.
But little did I know that my amusement was my undoing....
Our little pests grew and multiplied and were really going places. First to the hall sofa, the next bedroom and the worst of all, in my bed!! And sometimes, to my high embarrassment, I found the scurrying menace in my office bag, tucked in my notebook and I would hurriedly throw them in the dark dustbin. Let’s hope that I did infest that measly office of mine!!
Then began our bug-fighting saga - we got a first round of fumigation done. We had to spend a night outside the house and happily camped in Chitappa's house. It was all still a new experience then and there was a faint novelty around it all. But the fumigation hardly did anything. Maybe all the bugs had a happy smokin' time then, sitting around drugged by the smoke and jiving to 'Dum maro dum.....'
Then, the combat went to the next level. More reputed pest control company came in and with them, they got extremely smelly sprays. The smell was so nauseating that we were sure that if I could wreak havoc on us, sturdy 5ft+ human beings, these 0.5 inches bugs will die instantly. Well, the eternal optimism of us simple humans! The bugs - some died and attained moksha while the rest lived on to take revenge.
The sprays became a routine every 45 days and new generations of bugs would breed. I am sure some Bheeshma Pitamaah bug would have been relegating the war stories to the young ones, making them stronger and cleverer than us humans (with our five senses and all that). Who knows, maybe a Gitopedesh might have also happened in the hidden recess of our cots!
Meanwhile, most of the family members gave up and were resigning to accept these bugs as family , rakthapaasam and all that (loosely translated to 'blood is thicker than water' and after all, these mites did have our blood running in their veins (do they have veins?). But, it was a personal vendetta for me. I was itching (yeah literally itching all over) for their blood. Confusing right? Their blood was my family's blood and how could I shed that! But hey, I never killed any of the bugs. I always threw them off my balcony so that they could run into some other apartment or maybe some unsuspecting pedestrian took the little one home. Who knows, maybe they have a homing instinct...the result was there were always more bugs for me to find.
I added a new nightly ritual - search for bugs before sleeping and irritate the hell out of my poor husband! And then took to leaving the tube light on in the hope that they won’t venture out in the light. You see they like the dark, but I guess they liked my blood more.
Then came more changes - let’s throw away our old mattress, refurbish our sofa...and with all of them went out a new colony of bugs; like voyagers setting out to find and colonize new territories. We spent money like bug spray, but still no avail.
Eventually when we gave the old teak (sigh sigh) cots and still bugs were treating our house like their property, we realized their headquarters was in our cot. My wedding cot, the first thing that S and me bought together??? Noooooo (think hindi movie style 'Nahiiiiiiin!!').
So, tired of calling pest control companies and turning the house upside down and doing tonnes of laundry each time, we tried the DIY method. We got advice on how painting the bed will seal the pores and hence lock the bugs in. So, armed with sticky varnish and some brushes, S and I spent a precious weekend painting the bed and then cleaning the mess we made on the floor.
The bug spray smell was well lodged in our noses by then and the varnish's sickly smell fought hard to find space there. Yuck and a double yuck!
A week of short lived euphoria and then our friends returned again!! 'Athithi tum kab jaaoge?'
Sadly, we bit the bullet and decided to dispose our huge cot. That followed by another round of stronger fumigation where we sealed the house for 48 hours this time, we hoped that we would have finally reclaimed possession to our house.
For 2 weeks, we were edgy and not proclaiming any result...finally, things became normal and we could say that the bed-bug chapter is closed.
There are times when I still check under the mattress, corners of the bedcovers - like I said before, old habits die hard!
And yeah, that thing that I saw on my bed today - well, that was a piece of rolled up thread! Whew!!
I finally got around seeing the movie, Guzaarish! I am glad that I didnt see it when it was being talked about and was 'in the hype', but rather when I was in the mood to watch it. I am really sure if I had done so, I would have come out hating the over-melodramatic movie. But watching it when I was in a mellow mood made it a nice experience.
