Just fifteen days to go before I return to the pacifying embrace of motherhood, home-cooked food (I cannot believe I am saying this) and flushes that have a sense of responsibility towards mankind. Just fifteen days to go, and I was allowing myself to get carried away by the helium clouds of complacency that shouted: “You have learned everything that you needed to, oh enlightened one!” Little did I know that they would strike overnight.

Scams, politicians and the general shameless corruption make one puke from the wrong end. So, I generally sit on the pot with a copy of ‘Outlook’. This is going to test my ‘euphemism’ skills somewhat, but sitting with a copy of Outlook somehow makes bowel movement relatively ‘smooth’. It was no different that fateful day. But as I read an intricate account of the in-depth details and insightful analysis of how Sonia Gandhi admonished Manmohan Singh for saying something that he didn’t say, I felt a tingling sensation on my foot. Then on the other foot. The ‘tingling’ was on a gradual, but relentless path up my leg. Let me, at this point, digress from the issue that has not yet been laid out clearly, and let you in on the fact that I am at that age where my idea of a ‘turn on’ is not exactly a 50-year old Italian-Indian hybrid politician. I couldn’t possibly have a sub-conscious crush on this lady. No, it had to be something else.

I had no lenses on, which implies that I was as blind as the Dhritarashtra of bats. Looking closely, I spotted tiny black specs on my leg. They were moving up. Relentlessly marching towards their goal (whatever that would have been). Ant it struck me. ANTS!!!

I’ve lived in a clean house all my life. Ants to me have never meant more than tiny inconsequential many-legged losers. I have never felt scared, afraid or paranoid of ants. Ants, I have grown up to believe, are always meant to be squashed with slippers, shoes, hands, legs, newspapers…even toilet-paper. Unless they are black ants. In which case, they should be allowed to play around you, tickle you, and generally prove their playful innocuousness. After which, however, they must be squashed with slippers, shoes, hands, legs, newspapers…even toilet-paper.

On the fateful day, however, the tale unfolded differently. It is traditionally believed that sitting on the loo unlocks the brain’s hidden potential; it unearths the key to creative thinking in a jiffy. Rumour goes that Sir Alexander Graham Bell discovered that he needed a television, when he was sitting on the pot. How he went about trying to invent it, and ended up with a telephone is a story we shall keep for another day. Anyway, the creative neurons had fired up, and they were making my imagination run wild.

Horizons opened up and swallowed any semblance of sanity (pun unintended) that had been spared in this house. The destruction that these ants could cause was endless. They could burn up the building, eat up the furniture, swallow the clothes; the possibilities were infinite. Wide open now, and not bothering with Sonia and Manmohan, I gave the leg-climbers one final close look. “Well, they’re black ants. They’ll just play around for a while, run helter-skelter like insane buffoons, and disappear as mysteriously as they appeared”, I thought to myself. The thought, needless to say, was very comforting. And the tingling tickle (that had now reached the lower part of the thigh) wasn’t so bad either. One fatherly smile at the playful ants, and I decided to let them be. Not before thanking my lucky stars for not sending down red ants, though.

Only after I wore my lenses did harsh reality deliver the knock-out punch (and reality is getting exceptionally good at this). As the world blurred into focus, I figured that the house had been taken over by them. They had conquered the loo and the four walls and floor of a bedroom. A resolute army of their species was laying siege to another bedroom, ready to attack as soon as the stench from the unwashed-since-three-weeks clothes went away. Worst of all, however, they were all red. If all of them were red, so would the two I had so lovingly allowed to run around on the vast expanse of my thigh. Uh oh, Houston, Mayday, 911! Come on, any emergency term that you can think of!

Since the fateful day, the ants have taken over the bed (they’re bedridden, in a slightly different way), the clothes have been chewed off, the expired-six-months-ago food in the droning-refrigerator-that-is-more-like-an-oven has been digested (by the ants). It’s a sea of red everywhere I look around. And what about those two ants who were running themselves wild with ecstatic joy on my legs? Well, let’s not even go off on that tangent. Suffice to say that ‘Itch Guard’ does not work for ant-bite itching.

Just fifteen days to go…fifteen days to a clean house, scheduled meals, functioning flushes, and a refrigerator that’s cool. Fifteen days to an antless-cockroachless-lizardless existence.