Dedicated to the Ants

I owe this one to the ants for a long time........

Dedicated to the deceased ants of my room..

Once upon a time long long ago there lived a huge colony of ants underneath the door of the second bedroom of the flat on second floor of the green building in BTM in Bangalore.

Now incidentally this bedroom happens to be mine and Lazy Vadi’s bedroom. To Vadi they hardly made any difference as he is all dark and sour blooded mere mortal but for me they made life hell as I am a fair sweet blooded creation, a gift to humanity from the almightyJ.

Stepping into the room was an ordeal for me each day everyday with the result that I used to spend the better half of my day lying in the other bedroom belonging to Sri and Sattu much to their annoyance or in the drawing room and used to retire to my room only at mid night for obvious reasons.

So one fine day the “Lone Warrior” i.e. myself embarked on a crusade to wipe out the colony for once and all. Little did I know that what I had envisioned as a “One –hour fight” would turn out to be a “7-day battle”.

So on this one fine day which incidentally happened to be the first day of my weekend, I got one pack of M-Seal from the hardware store across the street. Started out with cleaning the hole with a pair of tiny scissors as I didn’t have any other tool for scooping and piercing, what followed was an army set loose on the predator (me) by the ant King. They started guzzling out as a red sea out to swallow anyone in their path. Seeing the enormity of the situation and cursing my short-sightedness with the choicest of words, I rushed to get some water which I poured into the crater and to my utter bewilderment the water all vanished!!

To avoid any further loss of valuable time and armed with M-Seal I approached the crater and covered it up with the long serpentine paste of M-Seal and lo and behold the crater swallowed the entire M-Seal paste and I was barely able to seal the ends of the crater. Satisfied at my job I left the ants to find their way out of the house themselves and proceeded to celebrate my victory as my Mission was accomplished.

So I pull lazy Sri out of his bed and force him to get ready so that we can go for a nice luncheon. What more could have sri asked for? The saying “Andha kya chahe Do ankhein” fits aptly on him as long as he doesn’t have to move any of his limbs and he keeps getting everything ready-made. So we go to Nandhinee Palace and have a nice scrumptious lunch all the time myself narrating long tales or epilogues by now to Sri of my victory in the one-hour war.

We come back home and I take sri to my room to show him my work of art and how my room is ant-free now. But what do I see? The ants have found another way of creeping down to the crater, seems like they had anticipated this D-Day scenario so they had this backup plan ready. The ants are now making their way to the crater by crawling in through the space between the door- frame and the wall. Now what should be my next step? Get more M-Seal and that’s what precisely I did, went down to the store and got more M-Seal. This time the dealer too was surprised as to why do I need so much M-Seal, I appraised him of the fact that there is a mini-war raging in that green building across the street.

Circa – Home again and in that my bedroom. I am busy sealing all possible crevices by the door frame where I could see and imagine ants creeping in. Now I am too tired and hence I retire to Sri’s room( as I am still scared to still sleep in my room in day time as the ants would locate me and kill me!!) for my weekend siesta.

After a more than lazy afternoon I come back to my room in evening and see the ants have found a new way this time they have formed two queues and are marching into the switchboard and from there god knows where. Now this one is easy to manage I get “Lakshman Rekha” the famed magical chalk piece and draw heavy duty lines around the switch board. Hallelujah it works and now the ants are frustrated and perplexed at what this new obstruction is. This doesn’t deter the ants and they search for a new route. I am amazed by their lack of tiredness and persistent approach to accomplish their target.

The pitched battle continued for another 5 days with the ants by now having become more organized and venturing out every morning in groups and searching for possible areas in my bedroom to re-build their colony. Any crack or crevice in wall or floor is their target area on which they target their all energies and start digging it or scooping it as the case may be. All this time I have started buying M-Seal by cartons and my room is taking the appearance as if it is being held together by pieces of M-Seal paste stuck here and there at random places. Little did it strike me that the task is easier since the army is divided now, I can just sweep them all off once or twice and it would be done.

The battle came to an end on the sixth day with myself pulling out all the M-Seal patches followed by a big sweep and mopping exercise and the grand finale – my cook stuffing all the crevices with turmeric powder which finally got my dear room rid of all the ants.

More important than the battle were the lessons I learned from the ants which I too followed resulting in a
mortal blow for them:

Always have a backup plan ready for emergencies: This was beautifully depicted by the ants in the first phase of the “war” as they had before-hand identified the crevices and cracks to be used in emergency.

Persistence- a Never say Die attitude: A tiny creature like an ant can have such a high doze of will power amazed me beyond measure and motivated me to display an even larger amount of the same.

Team Work: The ants were always working in teams – big or small. A single ant had a very high chance of getting lost in the vast expanse of concrete and hence teams. Only once when I did bring in my cook and formed a team with her, I was able to conquer the ants.

Strategy: Without strategy there can be no war, leave alone victory. The ants were intelligent enough to change their strategy form teams and fan out in all directions of the room only to retire some time later in the day to some collective place. I could visualize them all sitting and giving status update about their daily progress to their chieftain.

Speed of Attack: Dexterity is what the ants lacked. They behaved as if they had all the time in the world to go around searching for new locations. In the process I got aware of their strengths and exploited them to my benefit which finally resulted in their defeat. My final mortal blow was again a series of steps executed in a rapid manner – rounding up, sweeping, mopping and finally sealing the crevices with turmeric powder.