A Bugs Life

What has 6 legs and is the size of a large recreational vehicle? The ants living right outside my door. I have no idea that the insects and spiders feed on, but they seem to be doing better than I am. Flies so large you get a concussion when they bang into your head. Wasps with hanging legs that are far more muscled than mine and snails that look like they will constrict the very life out of you if given a chance. I caught one sneaking up on me in the garden the other day, looking all innocent until he stretched out a bit and bared his fangs of death as snails are often wont to do. I feel like Mowgli in my very own version of The Jungle Book, only without the animated dancing bear, black panther or crown wearing orangutan, but I do have the resident monkeys hanging around and I’m sure if I go to the right market, I will be able to get one of the rare miniature hand-held cows, India’s answer to the Chihuahua, which are all the rage among the fashionable Delhi set of which I now consider myself a platinum card-carrying member.

Driver, on the other hand has taken his new project of making mix tapes to an extreme and this morning it was Crazy Frog as we whizzed past the Lotus Temple and as if that were not bad enough, he served up a bit of Las Ketchup for dessert. It had me calling for total sensory deprivation and praying for the early onset of a minor coma, just long enough for the vehicle to come to a full and complete stop so that de-boarding could begin. How I long for the good old days of our deep conversations during which neither one of us understood the other…