Wanted: A Pied Piper!!!

Six of us friends took a train to Nagercoil to attend Beta and Pavethra’s wedding ceremony. The train journey was exciting and lots of fun, to say the very least!!! Remember how I mentioned in an earlier post that creepy crawlies and insects and I are not exactly the best of friends!?! What I failed to add is that neither do rodents make a delightful or lovely pair with me!!! Add to that, the presence of my even more wary of anything that does not resemble a human being, friend, G!!! She has the ability to bring not one, but a dozen roofs down, with her screaming and yelling at the slightest sighting of so much as even a moth!!!

Of course, even before the invasion by the animal kingdom began, we had excitement in the form of three of the gang getting on the train at the very last minute, that too in another compartment! They soon wound their way into the right one, with dear, rotund D, huffing and puffing away to glory!!! Thankful that all of us were finally aboard, we settled down to our usual round of pulling each other’s legs and giggling and laughing at the drop of a hat! There was also, of course, the matter of the wedding gift, which methinks, should be an entire post in itself!!!

We had some swapping of seats to be done so that all of us could be in the same compartment, and after having successfully driven away three other passengers to the other seats, we settled down to enjoy our journey. Lest you think that we actually drove them out the compartment, no, we politely entreated them to let us all sit together, the epitomes of polite etiquette that we all are!!!

It was when we were all well into making fun of each other that our esteemed guest decided to make its presence felt!!! A lady sitting on the seat next to ours claimed that she’d spotted a rat!!! G and I were thunderstruck at this declaration, and refused to believe it despite numerous other sightings by the rest of our group. We thought that they were all fibbing to scare and irritate us! It was then that G also spotted Mr. Rodent! We had no choice now but to believe the inevitable!!! Up went two pairs of legs in a flash, and the two pairs refused to come down for many an agonizing hour after that! Both of us nicely tucked in our legs beneath our thighs, and waited with bated breaths to catch another glimpse of the monster. I had still not seen even the tip of its tail, and I was hoping, in my heart of hearts that it didn’t really exist, when, I spotted a sudden movement from the corner of my eye and spotted a black, furry ball zap right under the berth I was already so precariously perched on! All this while, the most audible sounds in the compartment were that of the squeals and screams that involuntarily came out of G and my mouths!!! Of course, it didn’t help that the others found our fear rib-ticklingly funny and hilarious enough to call on pranks that conjured up rats, where there were none! Throwing bits of paper on us, sudden exclamations of horror, unexpected movements, they tried it all, and more!!!

To top it all, G spotted a cockroach crawling somewhere above her and let out a squeal, to add to the cacophony that was already so omnipresent!!! Now, the brave thing that I am, roaches don’t make me do a double take and I started admonishing her for making such a spectacle of her self!!! It was, after all, just a silly cockroach!!! :-D Woe betide me, I was soon reminded of the rodent, to which, somehow, the above statement didn’t seem to fit! How could I think “it is, after all, only a rat”, when I could hear a voice inside me scream, “It’s a rat, for heaven’s sake; drive it out, NOW!!!” :-/

As though one was not enough, one more furry thing was spotted by the other four! I still don’t know whether there were really two, or they were just hell bent on scaring me and G, out of our wits!!! D kept telling me how, when I would be fast asleep, one of the rodents would get into one of my shoes and I would get a nice, squishy welcome when I’d put my foot in, the next morning!!! Thankfully, nothing of that sort happened; neither did anything pop right out my bag, the moment I opened it! Nevertheless, it was one journey that neither G nor I will forget in a hurry!!!

Armed and Waiting!!!

Pic Courtesy: Google