My transformation into a cockroach did not happen overnight.
I underwent growth pains every night for years, and braved the days amongst my still-human family members and friends and fellow passengers and schoolteachers. Everyone was always woke enough not to vocalise their opinions on my pestness, but I saw it flash across their faces in the second before they would turn away. The transition was painstaking and gradual. Once, I remember vividly, a peer mocked me loudly during a lecture, using the profusely politically-incorrect slur, Vermin! to elicit a wave of laughter through the classroom. My English teacher stopped in her tracks in response to the disruption and remarked casually, No, no. I don’t think Taal is a cockroach, exactly. She was right. I wasn’t yet a cockroach, exactly. But I was getting there. Forgive me for harbouring resentments against this woman almost ten years down the line – look out for my upcoming blog on the schoolteachers of our milieu – but what 16-year-old does not memorise the instant in her life when she realised that everybody could see what she was trying so desperately to hide?
Such metamorphosis is bound to blur the surface of the mirror. I didn’t know if what I could see in it was what was real. It was all very confusing. I would wear XL t-shirts, hoping that the newly emerging legs at the sides of my torso were small enough to stay hidden. I combed the tiny antennae into my hair, stuffing them into pony tails; it would give me a headache sooner or later, but there is little conviction to comfort for a teenager. I would tell myself that nobody outside of my family could see.
You know the set-up of an Indian household. There are no boundaries between my mother and me. She knew what I looked like without a shirt on, she could see the development of exoskeletonous scales on top of my cells. I was beaten up for it, for years, as if you can whack and slap and sting and burn a human’s creepiness. And my father would watch this happen, comment sometimes, jibe sometimes, but overall not get too involved. And my sister would watch this happen silently, and later bring me tea to drink. She was careful never to mention my pestness to me. I realised then the number Instagram’s wokeness has done on her generation. But she would slip sometimes – while assessing herself in the mirror, she would express thanks that her cells still do, and always have, resembled human cells.
In this exclusive distinction between the private and the public, I felt safe in the politeness of private life until these comments began to slip through the cracks. The further along my metamorphosis I was, the wider the cracks became.
Aside from my English teacher, who really should’ve done better against a high school bully, I host resentments against no one. I found still-human friends, even lovers, sometimes, who overlooked it, or loved me despite it. They would look past my several legs, my garbage bag skin, my human-roach blood-milk, my pebbly eyes. Over the years, well into college, I realised there was no point in the pretence anymore. I was an arthropod amongst homo sapiens, and I began to own it in an uncomfortable way. Somehow, self-awareness acts as defence – you can’t make me feel bad about something I already know I am. I’m in on the joke. (Could someone hold my bag? I don’t have a free hand.) I started academic research and advocacy for biological minorities. At this time, I grew wary of the political correctness of polite society. Weren’t you curious, I wondered of my friends, about the technicalities of these conditions? Once I grew out of my own pretence, theirs seemed cowardly and tired to me.
Amidst these surface niceties, my human-thoughts began to grow smaller and smaller. My pestness stood in front of me, around me. I never knew the right approach to take to the mirror, so I stopped looking at it. I rejected myself from socials and events, from new people, from putting myself out there. I believed no one could look past my furry legs anymore, so they were all I became. The metamorphosis was complete. I withdrew into myself. I didn’t speak – I roach-spoke. I didn’t think – I roach-thought.
Nobody was as upset as my mother. Confronted by the failure of parenting tricks, she ordered me out of the house (not quite sent to the farm yet, but close enough). I scurried around on the dust-laden roads of Noida and roach-ate my favourite leftovers, and roach-realised my weirdness made my loneliness made me safe. One morning, while I was busking in the rotting April heat at a kiosk in Botanical Garden station, I overheard a girl walking past me. “I used to be a spider, you know,” she confided to her friend, obviously triggered by the sight of me.
My antennae perked up. I didn’t know the reverse-transformation of pest into human was possible! From that day, I began to see new, glorious hope. I crawled and creeped around the National Capital Territory, unaware of the direction to take to change my fate, optimistic that I would find the answer around the corner. I walked and walked and walked. I roach-read the names of each woman and her lover scribed on the inner walls of Humayun’s Tomb, I roach-travelled on the metro, free of cost, of course, from Hauz Khas to Gurgaon, from Rohini to Dilshad Garden. I killed my time waiting for the day my exoskeleton will crack, and instead of milk, blood will pour. I will rediscover my humanity like the striking of lightning. I will roach-have my human-life back. I imagined returning home to my sister. I imagined speaking again with my friends and lovers. I imagined the glory and redemption, of being normal again, of being only Taal, not adjective-Taal, not noun-Taal. The glory of normalcy. I daydreamed about fitting into Connaught Place, of being inseparable from the waves of crowds, of ordinariness. There was no extinguishing the fire with which I clung on to these dreams. I could not confront my present, so I lived in a utopian, make-believe future.
And then I died. Cockroaches don’t live very long. Eat the rich.
Taal Seth is a student of politics and sociology living in Delhi NCR. She aims to be a sharp critic, an insightful writer, and a completely unruly, insufferable woman.