Menangyala Aier
Ever been in situations that are disgusting and dreadful, yet evoke laughter later on when you think about it? I think the most incredibly revolting series of incidents experienced by my friends and I occurred in my old pg last year in Bangalore. I lived on the first floor, and a rickety spiral stairway was the only means of getting upstairs, which didn’t help my acrophobia greatly. The place holds a variety of cockroaches, house and field rats, lizards and mosquitoes, besides some amount of house flies. Forgive my rotten memory for I can’t seem to recall the exact day or month when the incidents took place, but I do know they occurred very early in the morning, sometime after midnight.
I share my room with three other girls, and on that fateful night, there were only two of us in the room. Some time when we were in dreamland, a rodent crept its way in the quiet of the night. Unknown to us, it quietly sneaked up to my friend’s bed and got under her blanket. My friend thought she felt something move near her feet, but she just ignored it. After a while, I felt the same movement, but didn’t think much about it. Then as I snuggled under the blankets, I heard a scream. The friendly rat had decided to have a peek at my friend’s face, and had edged close to her face. Unfortunately (or fortunately) she decided to open her eyes at that moment, which made her scream, and send the puzzled rat running off. The next morning we discussed about the ‘curious rat’ and related it to the other roommates, but forgot about it soon.
As night descended, however, the still and quite was punctuated by another scream. Shocked and repulsed, my friend quickly explained to me how she felt something on her arms first, then near her neck, and to her horror, found the same rat on her chest! However, it seems that this was not to be the end, for the next night the same rat visited my friend again, ran down her leg and bit her toenail! It looked like the friendly rat was getting hostile. My friend and I had enough, so the next night we shut all the windows and covered all the holes. I guess this worked, because we faced no further disturbances.
My friend is doing fine now. She laughs about the incident, and we decided that the rat might have had a crush on her, but since she didn’t respond, got mad at her. Of course, after that we still sighted big rats and small rats, some near the garbage bin, some running up and down the stairs, but not one inside our bedroom. My friend and I thought it was the most disgusting experience, but I wondered about the girl who found a cockroach in her gravy. And at least we didn’t find any of our roommates hanging from the ceiling (which occurred in another hostel), or have chilly encounters with unknown beings (experienced by people I know in other hostels).
What about the curious rat? What became of it? Well, the last I heard was a shriek in the middle of the night from the other bedroom and someone screaming ‘rat!!!!!!’
