The silent killer !

This is a true incident that happened last year.

Last summer me and three other girls were living in a house in a less populated part of Koramangala. My roomies were out-of-towners while I was a ‘fringe-Bangalorean’ that is my folks lived a little away from the city. In order to cut short the commute time I had convinced my parents that I should stay in the city during weekdays during summer Internships. My parent's reluctantly gave in when they met my other roomies and the landlord who was a nice gentleman. I was maha thrilled to be living alone for the first time in my life, that is if you discount the months before final exams when I usually stayed in the college hostel (but then that was more like being in the Central Jail, without the benefits.) The house in which we all lived like merry bachelorettes was a four bedroomed house, which means we had our own private rooms. My room was slightly bigger than the matchbox size of the other rooms and this was willingly ceded to me to accommodate my PC.

My room mates were a mallu gal ‘A’, a Bengali gal I used to call ‘Chikoo’ for obvious reasons ( she was plump) and ‘P’ a girl from Chennai. I was the only non-techie and Intern in this crowd. From day one, the four of us hit it off quite well. None of those "your-wet-towel-was on-my-bed" and "you-borrowed-my-shoes" frictions that happens to gals living in hostels or sharing rooms. I think having our own rooms was a big blessing.

One day I was very late coming from office. As a drove tiredly into the house I didn't notice that the streetlights were off. There were several empty plots near our house and a huge wooded park sprawled opposite the house. I pulled into the driveway and in the faint light of my bike headlights saw that my roomies bikes were already parked in the driveway. After I had switched off the light of my bike I noticed that it was pitch dark everywhere. Groping my way to the front door I felt around till I found the switch to the light on the verandah and flicked the light on. The verandah was instantly bathed in yellow light and I noticed that the front door was ajar. The house was pitch dark save for the flickering of the TV and there was no movement within. I felt a chill run up my spine. I fished out my mobile from my handbag and called the landline in the house. I could hear the phone ringing but no one picked up the phone. I tried my roomies mobiles with no luck.

Fearing the worst I gingerly went inside the near dark hall. The light switch for the hall near the front door was useless as there was no bulb in the socket. That left the tubelight with its switch at the other end of the hall. As I walked into the dark hall groping my way around I could get a terrible smell. The smell was quite overpowering and I felt nausea welling up within me. Covering my nose with my jacket I groped around till I found the tube light switch and put it on. As the tube light flickered I got the terrible glimpse of a dead body that lay sprawled in the hall. Stifling a scream I rushed wildly out of the hall and into the kitchen. Quickly closing the door to shut out the terrible sight I put on the light switch with a trembling hand. I froze in horror at the sight in the kitchen.

Crockery and cutlery lay everywhere and the kitchen was in a mess. On the kitchen platform were my roomies their eyes wide with terror, mouth open in a silent scream. ‘Chikoo’ clutched a blue plastic packet in her cold hand. It had “Bellona Cockroach Repellent” written across in bold letters....

And judging from the dead body of the cockroach in the hall it was damn effective.
The salesman was right, it was ‘deadly’.

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Trackback: In my absence, one of my roomies had lit the Bellona agarbathi thinking that it was a regular agarbthi. This had caused the cockroach to come out and breathe its last in the hall where they were sitting watching TV. And since all three were terrified of cockroaches they would have fled to the nearest room i.e. the kitchen on seeing the roach in the hall. But to their bad luck the smell of the agarbathi had made the roaches in the kitchen to crawl out too to die on the kitchen floor. This would have made them jump on the kitchen platform effectively trapping them till I came back from work.

I took a broom and gathered the lone ranger in the hall and the other fellahs in the kitchen and put them to their final rest in the drain outside. After a thorough inspection of the house and lots of reassuring my roomies finally climbed down from their perch of one hour.

‘A’ gets married in May and ‘Chikoo’ in March. Me and ‘P’ the youngest amongst the four are now back with our parents. But this is one incident that we will never forget for a long time to come.