House Guests

So life in Varkala is good and our team has settled quite nicely into our little Bamboo hut life.

Yoga on the beach in the morning, coffee at the Temple Coffee house, shopping, swimming, more shopping and at least one or two meals at the Italiano Restaurant.

Usually before bed, I read some of my 932 page book, Shantaram. So one night, I’m at the part where Lin is living in the slums in Mumbai. So I’m not sure if I’m still reading of the creepy crawler episodes or if something really did crawl across my arm. So I move my hand further up and feel it again. Ugh… So I jump out of bed and turn on the lights. Our little creature is hiding at the end of the bed but we can see the shadow of it's antennae. Since Michelle C and I are now jumping around the room, I open the door to go get our night watchman. He comes running over like we’ve just been shot but in the typical Indian fashion, asks our permission before entering our hut. He even takes his shoes off. Once he’s there, we pull back the mattress and the 3 inch cockroach runs away. Our watchman jumps around looking for something to catch it with so we give him a bag but the bugger goes into hiding. Our guy then runs out to get some spray. Then he starts spraying at the head of our bed.

The cockroach comes out and he starts spraying the thing like a carwash. (Apparently cockroaches can withstand a nuclear war so the spray only serves to annoy our guest.) By this time, I’m out the door doubled over laughing because Mich C is herding our guy towards cockroach (no touching in this culture) and screaming out “kill it, kill it”. (I don’t think Hindus are too keen on killing creatures either) So our guy grabs a bucket and a paper and flicks the cockroach into it and brings it outside. As it starts to climb out of the basket, Mich C is screaming “step on it!!!” I’m still laughing as I point out the guy is not wearing any shoes….

So our guys tells us to wait five minutes for the spray to disperse and then we can go back to bed. (yeah right) So we sit and watch and out comes a baby cockroach… It was a little easier to catch. Then out came the “Mama” roach… By this time, another man has appeared and is helping in the hunt.

Throughout this, Mich C and I are packing and moving our bags around as the guys are spraying and the roaches tour the room. At one point, the watchman flicks the roach and it pings off the chest of the other guy like he’s playing hot potatoe and doesn’t want to catch it…. Eventually the Mama gets the big squash… So for the rest of the night, Michelle and I leave the lights on and sleep facing the headboard. I think I could have won $10,000 if I had a video of this! As a tip, I think we gave our watchman the equivalent of a week’s wages. Well worth it to us!