Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Thanks,' I told him.
'Shri Nanjappa is also our guest,' he informed me. 'You are
wishing to meet him?'
'Later.'
'As you like.'
A walk was what I needed, then food and sleep. I opened the
padlock on the door bolt, which made me feel I had rented a storage
cupboard, pushed open the door, and groped for the light switch.
Two dazzling banks of strip lighting sufficient to shoot 25 ASA film
at maximum shutter speed without a flash ignited. Perhaps their
function was practical: to blind occupants to the galloping exodus
of dachshund-sized cockroaches that happened every time someone
opened the door.
I stamped on one especially large brute with all the force I could
muster, grinding down the sole of my loafer until I was convinced
the thing was dead. The moment I raised my foot the cockroach shot
out, unscathed, heading for the shadows of a nasty old teak armoire.
There's something sinister about a creature that could withstand a
nuclear holocaust. Cockroaches
know
when you're watching them.
And they know exactly what you've got planned for them: poisons,
traps, clever ambushes, whatever. The whole business merely amuses
them. They're immune. In Bangalore, I once doused one in kerosene
and set it on fire. It merely trotted off nonchalantly, the flames tickling
its carapace, flickering to smoke before it had reached those
unreachable shadowed places where its mates were waiting to have a
good laugh.
I threw my bag on the narrow bed, raising a cloud of dust and the
tinkling music of bedsprings. The mattress was as thin as gauze
over the springs, which protruded at various heights. The floor was
the kind of concrete that is mixed with chips of stone, marble, and
something shiny, glass perhaps - that is etched into a grid before it
dries to simulate tiles. It, too, was so carpeted with dust that I actually
left footprints. Huge scales of whitewash peeled from bare concrete
walls on three sides, and on the fourth the windows lacked most of
their glazing panels, all of their mosquito screens, and any trace of
shutters or curtains. They looked out onto the main street below,
admitting a stupendous level of noise. Another door dangling from
