How priorities change

I’ve been a major instigator of cockroach deaths in the family. The moment I saw an adult cockroach, it had to be killed, and my mom used to be the knight with the cataclysmic broom. The broom was gradually replaced by the spray can.

Then I grew a simmering guilt. Cockroaches are pests alright, and they do spread diseases by crawling all over the place. But my getting them killed was simply due to the fear factor: it had nothing to do with health hazard. I started thinking: I have seen worse people than cockroaches and I never wanted them killed, so why cockroaches? I started ignoring them.

A few months ago I wrote about how we had to kill a baby snake. I didn’t want the baby snake killed. I wanted to catch it and then release it in the wilderness. Sadly, it had to die.

And today we had a centipede in the house. I found the exact image from Google Images that I’m showing here:

Our immediate concern was to kill the thing before it could harm Vasudha in any way. What if it crawled on to the bed and stung her? The thought of capturing it and throwing it out just came for a few seconds, but it soon got overshadowed by the possibility of it getting away while we tried to catch him. Killing was the sure shot way of making sure it wouldn’t harm Vasudha. So first Alka beat it to pulp then she sprayed the insecticide upon its broken body. It didn’t die. The coup de grace was delivered by Alka’s friend Ritu in the form of unrelenting slipper-blows.

Now that I think about the whole thing, I felt quite relieved. Having a baby changes you considerably. It presents you with the happiest moments of your life, and it also makes you feel vulnerable to many things. Whenever I see things like that centipede, my main concern is to make sure they stay away from Vasudha.