Aaao Dance Kare | Flash Post 445

Button, I had a nightmare a few nights back and saw them jiving, fox-trotting, doing the cha cha cha, the jitterbug, the twist, the shake-shake-shake  and having the time of their lives. Some were also doing their own number! They had turned up in droves in their designer best, dripping with emeralds and pearls, each trying to out-do the other. And then, I woke up with a start, drenched in sweat.

Nothing makes sense to me! Can you be more specific please and tell me why the nightmare was so scary for you?

Both Dost and I fell prey to a creepy situation that still makes my skin crawl. This happened when we travelled to Kolkata for a friend’s wedding. We were put up in Room 666 of a hotel close to where the wedding was taking place. After the grand reception of Dipanwita and Mohit, we returned to ours and promptly fell asleep. Our agenda was to stay on for one more day, wake up late the next morning, eat phuchkas (known as panipuri or golgappas elsewhere) from Raju, the phuchkawala I’ve known since the time I started work and gorge on Nizam’s kathi rolls before returning to Mumbai.

What derailed your plans?

Patience, Button. There was another party that night in Room 666. The occasion: The birth of a baby boy in the family after almost a decade.

Were you’ll invited to this one as well?

No. But we got brutally assaulted that night. They closed in on us and sucked us dry. We assumed we were being bitten by mosquitoes initially and called the hotel’s housekeeping service who promptly sent one of their attendants to change the mosquito repellent in our room. But the assault continued till the wee hours of the morning. Incidentally, Dost slept through it all and vehemently denied that he had been bitten!

Who are you talking about?

Pests. Dangerous pests!

I don’t like suspenses. Surely these pests have a name!

Room 666 was by far their best room in the hotel and many dignitaries had been put up there before. What happened to us for 2 nights must have also happened to other occupants but what struck me as extremely odd was that no one had complained about being bitten by these blood-sucking bedbugs. When we woke up the next morning I found the bed littered with blood stains. The pests had also left welts on our skin—on mine for sure—and I was extremely anxious that I would contract some kind of skin disease.

Why didn’t you ask to be moved to another room?

There were none!

Why didn’t you move to another hotel?

There were none because all the rooms in almost every other hotel  had been booked by the bridal couple for celebrity guests, relatives and friends. We could have taken a flight out the same day but seats weren’t available on any flight.

What did you do?

We had no option but to stay the following night and dozed off on the twin couches in the room that were also full of bed bugs.

That sounds terrifying! Could scar you for life!

I have become totally paranoid. You’ve seen me go out of my way to save the tiniest of lives—be it moths and butterflies and even bees from Messi’s clutches or from the clutches of the staff when they go after house lizards and snails in the garden—but bedbugs! Never. I’d play Pied Piper and lead them on till they all drown.

Understandable, even though I wasn’t at the receiving end, I get a hint of what you’ll went through.

My biggest fear is that I could have carried some of them back home in our luggage or the clothes we wore on our way out! I scan the bed for bugs every now and then and the tiniest speck on my white sheets has me scrutinising them to make sure they are not what I think they are.

Did you bring any back!

I spotted one black speck on Dost’s white pillowcase yesterday but it wasn’t a bed bug. However, my family feels I am losing my mind!  And, here’s a bedbug limerick for you, Button:

There once was a bed bug named Peter
Whose bite was much worse than a skeeter’s
He’d suck up your blood
Just open a flood
By the end, he’d drain a whole liter.

You mean someone actually wrote a limerick on bed bugs?

I guess!