This weekend, Father A and I went to his ancestral home in Mangalore. The house is over a hundred years old and many a time I have kicked at a dust bunny to find a man who's been asleep for twenty years and needs to borrow a rupee for his house rent. So old that that the cockroaches refer to Alexander the Great as 'Old Alex' and the bed bugs are used to British bums.
Father A's family is Roman Catholic so for them Easter means more than being able to eat unlimited quantities of Roast Pork. In fact, they don't even make Easter eggs or cake because I'm already growing up believing the wrong things about the spirit of Easter. Because Easter and Christmas to me mean one, overriding, deeply felt thing-Roast Pork.
There's been an unusually hot spell in Mangalore. However, there are options. You can sleep under mosquito net and slow-boil to your death, or you can sleep without a net and let the mosquitoes blood-let you to death.
But these air-borne bayonets of the South have no idea of the vengefulness that is me. For one, I'm not Roman Catholic. For another, there was still a whole leg of pork left and I had to live. At least for the pork.
While scavenging for something to do, I found an electronic fly swatter. My life hasn't been the same since. As each mosquito whirred into the charged fibre, there was a sound like a damp firecracker going off, or like my maternal grandfather farting over chholey masala and rice. Then, the fried mosquito spiraled to the ground.
And there I was, thinking, dude, this is why the boys in my class used to burn red ants. And I wasted my life playing with Barbie?
I was like a woman possessed. I pirouetted with the swatter held out above me. I had conversations gently waving the swatter in the air like an English memsahib. I walked swinging the swatter robustly by my side. And each time: pppfffft-crack-hiss.
And last night, on the way home, Father A emanated a rosy glow because he had been to church all three days. And I emanated a rosy glow of my own.
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