For three weeks i had been chasing a rat (or two) around my house. It was a most surprising thing firstly, that we should have rodents in our ninth floor flat in a relatively clean and well-maintained block of apartments. Nevertheless, there were tell-tale signs - gnawed bread, droppings, then the plastic pipe of the sink was eaten into - the list was becoming endless and increasingly tiresome. As a result we kept edibles away at night, set glue traps and mechanical traps and hoped for the best. The rat managed to ignore or avoid all the traps. It did get entrapped in the glue trap one night, but obviously managed to escape - leaving behind a telltale swathe of fur on the deadly glue. It was like he (or she) had experienced a bit of waxing and then escaped! All this did was confirm that there was a rat in the house - and a rather large one at that - since it had managed to free itself from the deadly glue which requires a fair amount of strength. Well- we were rather glum after this episode, and resigned to the presence of this rather large rat in the house. But we were all equally clear we did not want to poison the rat. We wanted it caught and thrown out, but not killed. Call it a streak of non-violence or superstition or whatever you like.
Around four weeks after the presence of the rat in the house was known, i went on a trip to visit the 8 Ganesha temples in Maharashtra - a pilgrimage that goes by the name of Ashtavinayaka. It is a beautiful trip that my dear friend Deepa had told me about. She goes every year with her husband Milind and each time i hear about it i wish to go as well. This year Deepa made my wish come true by lending me her car and driver who was familiar with the route and off we went. The trip is accomplished in 2 days and involves 850 kms of driving. Seeing five of the temples on the first day and three on the second, we completed the trip on the 6th of January. We were three of us - my daughter Mallika, my sister and i who were able to go on this visit. We felt thoroughly accomplished having done such a wonderful thing in the first week of the year itself and the future of 2011 looked decidedly rosy and peace-filled. Naturally we came back laden with idols of each of the 8 Ganeshas we had worshipped and, of course, prasad of modaks that we had offered at the sixth temple we visited - that of Siddhivinayaka.
A few days passed and i had installed all the eight idols neatly in a row on my shelf next to my writing desk. They sat there in the order in which we had visited them and i enjoyed gazing at them, reciting their names to myself and reliving the wonders of each of their shrines and enjoying the peace this brought within. The rats in the house had been silent for a few days now. We thought they may have magically turned into horses and galloped out the front door one night.
Now one morning the bananas that are kept in a fruit bowl on the upper level of our duplex apartment were gnawed. The rat was back, it was pronounced with dread. What's more, my maid exclaimed, it had now found its way to the upper floor. All this time, confined to the kitchen or maybe the lower floor, it was now upstairs, right amongst us - there we slept and ate and indeed spent most of our time. There was mayhem and the search for the rat was intensified. My son who sleeps on the floor occasionally in our room was mortified and demanded an immediate visit by a rat exterminator (after seeing too many Disney movies, I realized). Well, the exterminator came in the form of the building supervisor who looked all around the upper floors, moved all the furniture and found nothing. He left saying there did not appear to be a rat in our house. Utterly disbelieving, we decided we had to find our own rat.
Well, one night, my husband saw the rat run along the wall in my study. It was rather long and big, he confirmed. We all immediately left the room and closed the door. We thought we would starve the rat out. This also happened to be the room where the 8 Ganeshas of Ashtavinayaka were happily installed. And there was still some prasad lying on my bookshelf.
After 24 hours we ventured into the room, wondering what we would find. The prasad had been eaten by the rat. The idols of Ganesha were looking somewhat disturbed. It appeared to have run amongst them. There were a few droppings in other places. The rat was definitely still there. Mildly put out by the fact that my study was being overrun by rats and quite unusable, (i was reluctant to use the room though i knew the rat was hardly likely to harm me) we went about setting traps once again all over the room. We set about six glue traps in various places, hoping it would not free itself from them this time, and if it did, it may get stuck on another one unwittingly. We set a mechanical trap as well.
Three more days passed and there was no sign of the rat. On the fifth morning i walked into the room. Standing in the middle i surveyed it. There was a silence in the room that somehow convinced me there was nothing it in anymore. However there were still traps all over the floor with rotting food in them. A sympathetic sweeper from the building had advised us to use onion bhajias to trap the rat. 'They like the smell of the oil,' he said. The maid went dutifully to buy the bait. The bhajia seller laughed at her and said there were no onion bhajias available for humans to eat with the price of onions being what it was and she was asking for them to catch a rat! He sold her gobi manchurian instead, saying if it was fit for humans, it was fit for a rat. When she came back with the blobbish looking gobi manchurian pieces, i had looked at them a little unconvinced about their powers to attract humans or rats, but had not argued. We were all at the end of our tether. It was 9 pm and the traps had to be set for the next day. So we had set them. And they had not worked. After five days of waiting in ambush, i decided the hunt was over. I opened up my study, aired it and ordered it thoroughly swept and cleaned. Soon, the room was as good as new and i began using it again.
There were no signs of the rat anywhere in the house after this. The Ganesha idols were never disturbed again, there were no droppings either. We decided we would wait for the rat to give us a sign again as to where it was and then renew our efforts to catch it (again). My maid even began placing bananas in the fruit bowl upstairs and would declare with satisfaction every morning that they remained uneaten that the rat was no longer upstairs. Therefore we all assumed the rat had changed location to the downstairs area again, if at all, or it had run away, somehow. However no one was really convinced that this is indeed what had happened as the evidence was not conclusive, merely circumstantial.
Around this time i left for a five day trip to visit my mother and the Jaipur Literature Festival. While i was away, I heard from my husband that the rat was found. There was a stink coming from my study and it was unmistakeable. The sweeper who had advised us about the onion bhajias bait was called upon. He moved the sofa and found the rat had burrowed into the back and then died (suffocated) inside. The rotting body was removed. But the stink persisted and i am told a second one was also discovered. Finally the sofa was removed from my room and it is not likely to come back. I don't feel entirely comfortable having that graveyard for rats back in my room. I however, thankfully, was spared the gory mess and sights and smells of such a happening.
I am a believer and hence i do state that i believe the rat or rats had come to our house with a purpose. Further their rat intelligent had brought them upstairs to where the Ganeshas were after our visit when the idols came into the house. The rat being the vehicle of Ganesha had come to the place where the idols were installed, had tasted the prasad - the modak, which is its favourite food, and had then called it a day. The rat had probably achieved its purpose and moved forward in the cycle of birth and death.
Is this the only or rightful conclusion to come to at the end of this story. Of course not. It is just one possibility, but tell me what else can this story mean?
