Jurassic bathroom

I just realised (mostly because a lot of people who know me and to my eternal surprise, still love me, called me up and yelled - "TEN things and you didn't mention that you almost got us arrested for child abuse?"), that I should have mentioned that I am mortally scared, terrified, petrified, horrified and frightened of all things reptilian. I can stand to be in the same room as lizards, as long as they're at the other corner of the room, where I can keep an eye on them. I shudder when garden lizards and salamanders cross my path. Snakes have me running for the trees. I'm not even getting on to the subject of crocodiles and alligators. I can't watch movies which are shot on or around rivers because I'm always dreading a huge ugly crocodile lumbering out of the water. But just like a moth is drawn to a flame, I watched all the Jurassic park movies and Godzilla. It is now part of the family&friends lore that I didn't sleep for weeks after each of these and when I did start sleeping, my dreams had me sobbing through the night. I am not proud of this. I generally tend to keep this a deep dark secret. And I will shortly close this blog and start an anonymous blog so that certain unnamed people (much as I love them and am grateful that they still love me), cannot force me by blackmail to reveal certain so-called-truths on my blog.

This phobia of mine affords great entertainment to my family. I have tried hard to gain the respect of my nieces and nephews, but dropping your parcels and running out of a store because you saw a lizard does not generally engender respect. Just the opposite. And as to what the sight of a three year old laughing at you does to you, his wise, kind and altogether wonderful aunt, I leave to your imagination. My mother, the one kind and understanding soul in my life, is the only one who at least tries not to laugh at me. I love her for this. I love her for lots of things, but for this, she will be enshrined among the angels.

She saved me once you know, from a salamander attack. Well, she and my brother (the small big brother) and the maid, and half my father's office staff, and the corporation sweeper, and arbid people who were walking by on the road, and the neighbours, and I really have lost track of how many other people were there.

It all started on one quiet Saturday morning many many many years ago at about 11 a.m., when I drifted out of sleep and into the bathroom. All I was doing was standing by the wash basin with a toothbrush in one hand, and a tube of toothpaste in the other, when I felt the weight of an evil gaze on me. I looked all around, and found nothing. So I put it down to my overactive imagination and turned my attention back to the task at hand. But the feeling just wouldn't go away. So I turned around again. And there at the trap at the head of the drain, stood the scariest salamander I have ever seen (And I have seen quite a few, believe me). For those of you who have not seen salamanders, I have downloaded a sketch.

It was large, with a deep brown black body and a deep red back. And as I stood there petrified ( yes, I did turn to stone), it slowly started to advance towards me, stepping over the grating that it had knocked down in order to get at me. And it was really large. As salamanders go, it was humongous. Do you remember that scene in Godzilla, where they're down in the tunnel with the creature and they're almost caught under it as it lumbers away down the tunnel. Well, that's the kind of stride that it had. At this point, I came to my senses, and with one bound, I had leaped on to the relative safety of the closet. I say relative, because I am sure that if it had stood upon its hind legs, it could have pulled itself on to the closet with ease. While I was getting my balance by grasping the flush tank, I was wondering what the wailing in the background was.

It was only when I heard the pounding on the bathroom door and my mother's agitated voice that I realised the wails were coming from me. And I just couldn't stop. It took about 15 seconds longer for my small big brother to come hurtling down the steps shouting agitatedly. He told me later that he thought I was being murdered. Once he realised that I was not in immediate danger, he tried to figure out how to get me to 1. stop that infernal noise 2. come out of the bathroom 3.behave like a human being. Now, we lived in the house that my grandfather built, and he built houses to last. This meant that bathrooms had doors which could easily have repulsed the barbarian horde. Breaking it down would have meant bringing a battering ram into the house. SBB realised that that only way to get me out of there was to get me to open the door. And that involved my getting down from the closet. I am not going into the details of how my small big brother talked me into quietening the wails into deep shuddering sobs. All I'm telling you is that it took him a long time. All this while our maid was standing by my mother and singing what she thought were soothing songs to quieten the wild beast - me, not the salamander. But since they sounded like funeral hymns, it just didn't help.

It took them a couple of hours, but finally they did rescue me. And as soon as I was out of the bathroom, I bolted out of the house and careened into my father, who had been recalled from one of his work sites (where concreting was in process) and since he had come rushing back because his office had informed him that his darling daughter was being attacked, his first action was to hug me, and then ask me very suspiciously what had happened. I'm not stupid; I know when I'm really in trouble, so I immediately started wailing again, and refused to get back into the house till I was sure the "arana" was dead. It definitely distracted everybody. They now had to kill, or at least catch the salamander. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Our maid did it with ease, actually. And that's when I went,"but this one is too small, it's not the same one....waaaaiiiiiiillll".

My father, already on a short fuse, gave me a look that would have incinerated a small animal and since even my angel mother had stopped sympathising, I decided it was better to shut up. Of course, for the next few days, until my father forbade the mention of the word 'arana' in his house, I kept muttering under my breath that it had been MUCH bigger.

AND on one Saturday morning three weeks later, the family woke up to the sounds of my screams again. And that's when we figured out why the salamander was so much smaller when the maid caught it. It was no longer pregnant. The cunning creature had laid its eggs in a crevice in the wall. And they had begun hatching. The floor of my room was covered in baby salamanders and there were millions of them. Okay, thousands. Oh okay, hundreds.

But anyway, I had been vindicated. It had been bigger. MUCH bigger. And I was insufferable for the rest of the day.

"arana" is the malayalam word for salamander.