The Pilgrim

When I was nine years old, I discovered puddles in the corners of my room. At first, I thought I had stumbled upon a plumbing leakage, but when I tried to wipe them away, I realized they were, in fact, hundreds of translucent little insects huddled together in the cooler, darker parts of the room, as if scared. I did not have the heart to stomp them out. I thought about calling my mother but worried she’d vacuum them up, killing them anyway. If I just left them alone, would they clear up on their own? They might be seasonal, my room just a pitstop. Why should pilgrims be squashed out?

But days, weeks, months later the bugs were still there, the huddle looking larger, spreading . Because I still wasn’t quite sure what one was to do with such things, I did what any nine-year-old might do: I gathered them by the handfuls and stuffed them at the back of my closet.

That’s when I first learnt that they could sting. Not angry and excruciating. No, these stings were small; soft. They made my eyes water involuntarily for a second and throbbed for a day or two, but only gently, almost apologetically, making me feel sorry for them.

So to the closet they were relocated. I hid them well, covered them up with my clothes, and hoped they’d not scuttle out through the gaps, quietly telling them to stay hidden ! I meticulously removed all the mothballs from the closet that my parents had carefully shoved in various corners, possibly precisely to ward off such intruders. Was I being rebellious? I had become co-conspirator with a hundred-odd bugs – or were they in the thousands now? There hadn’t really been any clear communication, no agenda chalked out, no course of action discussed. I was clearly trying to help, surely they get that ?

My unwitting rebellion didn’t stay as hidden as I’d hoped. I returned home one day to my mother angrily holding up a bunch of my clothes, shaking them at me. It turned out the bugs had made themselves a feast in the closet by making their way through half a dozen of my t-shirts and then some. Even as my mother gave me an earful about what to her was clear evidence of my delinquency, I could not point the blame in the right direction. She’ll call the exterminator. It’ll just have been for nothing . In their defence, I had completely forgotten about leaving them anything edible and they had to eat something .

This was my fault.

I tried to correct my oversight, but they had developed a taste for fabric and no amount of pulverized glucose biscuits or breadcrumbs could deter them. The holes kept appearing relentlessly, and my parents couldn’t quite understand how I was going through them so quickly. Afraid my secret was about to be exposed in some sort of family intervention, I decided to re-relocate the bugs.

They had grown in number again. I was sure. And I had no bigger space that belonged strictly to me in our very modest middle-class house, so moving them was not an option. I decided to do the next best thing and move my clothes instead. Overnight, I went from being a moderately organized child to a mess—clothes strewn on the chair, on the floor, underneath the bed.

My parents didn’t say much to me, but in hushed tones, many of their discussions now revolved around their problem child. They were not sure what they were doing wrong, why I was acting out . And I could neither assuage their guilt nor clear my name without sacrificing my asylum seekers and—if I put myself in my parents’ shoes—sounding a tad mad.

#

Things carried on like this for a few years. The insects were thriving; it was clear by now that they were not pilgrims and my room no pitstop. I no longer thought that they intended to leave. I can’t say I wasn’t annoyed at this inconvenience, but I had also grown fond of them, leaving me with few options. When they grew so many that they threatened to spill out of my room, I started putting them in jars and boxes.

This eventually led to another discovery: most people couldn’t see these insects; certainly not my parents. I wasn’t sure if they truly couldn’t see them, or if they didn’t look hard enough. I’d understand that. The insects were not very prominent; you could easily mistake them for stray puddles if you didn’t look closely, as I had done that first night.

But even those who couldn’t see them could see the odd things I did to accommodate them in my life. They had started to bite more, harder , and it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide the bite marks and the subsequent wounds from the scratches I left on my skin in an attempt to assuage the itch. When they were still few, my parents took me to doctors, figuring I was allergic to something or the other. But that was a dead end. Fearing further interventions, I stopped scratching for a while—which was unbearable—and then gradually switched up my wardrobe to long sleeves, almost all shirts, always cuffed and buttoned.

At school, a well-meaning teacher pulled me up. Was I being bullied? No , I said. What a great excuse that might have been. But having become a recluse, there was no one at school who hated me enough to be an actual bully and no one who liked me enough to take the fall for me. When she asked again, I said, Allergies. I’m on medication. No more questions and an occasional pass to pop a quaint candy in class.

During these years, I once tried to carry some of the insects in my pockets to school having run out of empty containers. That turned out to be a sordidly bad idea. For one, they ate through my pockets and many of them scuttled away. More holes to explain. And then they went around stinging others, even those that couldn’t see them, creating a general gloom and panic in the classroom, the teachers unable to comprehend why some of the kids were suddenly bursting into tears or losing their temper. I let the runaways go, hoping they’d clear out the classrooms. For the most part, they did. But I think some of them latched on to a few of the students for good because they never quite recovered from the sullenness I knew so well, although I had learnt to live with it.

I knew I could not risk taking them out of my room again. I was afraid to leave my room, lest some of them escape. What if they bit my parents? What if they took over the whole neighbourhood, the whole city? As well, I didn’t want the city to launch a witch hunt. So I shut myself in. My parents chalked it up to more teenage issues and left me alone, hoping perhaps that I’d grow out of it.

I did intend to. I figured if the insects wouldn’t leave, someday I would. Move out, as grownups are wont to do. And my permanent pilgrims could stay forever in this room, relics of my childhood. And when I would return on occasion, the tears from their sting would become part of the nostalgia of it all.

#

I had grossly underestimated the largeness of their presence in my life. From occupying corners in my room, they eventually took to gathering around me in numbers, as though keeping me company. Exactly how much intention or thought could I attribute to their actions? I tried not to at all, but it was comforting, this unseemly friendship. Sometimes, they’d crawl up on my bed, their collective presence generating a gentle hum that lulled me to sleep and blurred the line between wakefulness and dreams. I’d feel a few of them crawl into my ears, settle in the nooks and crevices, like dust in cracks. They still bit often, but the stings were familiar now. Sometimes I’d worry: could they be burrowing into my brain, making their way by narrow tunnels through my ears, my nose?

How absurd.

Between my family anxiously hovering on the peripheries of my life, wondering where it all went wrong, and the general apathy of my peers, I found myself becoming increasingly fond of these squatters. It was no longer a pitiful saviour complex that I felt towards them but a sort of kinship among outcasts.

Surely I recalled that it was them that made me an outcast?

Less and less now.

In any case, I was too focused on their new developments to dwell on past transgressions. Their numbers had started to fall. One day I woke up and a few jars had emptied out, and upon further inspection, I found my room relatively less occupied. I turned the house upside down looking for potentially displaced bugs under the pretext of misplaced stationery—but nothing. I was saddened yet relieved: perhaps the travails of some had come to an end; perhaps my life could regain a semblance of normalcy. Perhaps my self-fabricated, self-imposed exile from society could be eased. The turn of events brought on a short-lived phase that greatly excited my parents, my return to a somewhat social demeanour.

But something else was going on. The bugs weren’t just disappearing; the ones that remained were growing. It took me only a few days of dogged observation to realize that these bigger insects had been feasting on their fellow travellers. I obsessively pored over textbooks, spending hours in the library, trying to solve this mystery. This, my white-collar parents took as a positive fire, more than happy to supply fuel for it. But my obsessions yielded nothing. I returned to aimless isolation, leaving mother and father once again questioning all their life choices, wondering whether they should have had an extra child—perhaps two—instead of putting all their aspirational eggs into this one unhinged basket.

#

By the time I was ready for college, the bugs had all died out save one.

A full cycle of evolution had passed in the macrocosm of my room— survival of the fittest —the fittest in this case being a misshapen, oddly looking, rat-sized, presumably unknown creature. Too big to be called an insect without inducing a primal horror in just about anybody. I had watched it grow, hell, I’d nursed it to this capacity, and I’d be lying if I said even I, on occasion, wasn’t repulsed by its form. In its macroscopic presence, I felt something possessive, almost ominous: it bit harder, nestled closer, herded me protectively, manically, room to room, always by my side, hanging by my trousers or perched on my shoulder.

But it was a friend, nonetheless. A childhood friend, perhaps my only true friend. Someone who knew all parts of my life, responsible for shaping some of the most critical ones.

Starting fresh came to mean nothing.

The ultimate surviving pilgrim followed me out of home and into my new life. It hid now under shirts and in the folds of my pants, under jackets in winters, in deep pockets of snuggly overcoats. It grew larger still, ever so slightly, every now and then. Its legs were sharper now, gripped on to my skin harder, left me with new kinds of bruises, nothing like the mild stings of its kin from my childhood.

At night, it nestled in the crook of my neck, its hums loud, almost whispers, almost human – sometimes lulling me to sleep, sometimes keeping me awake. I couldn’t tell you what it said, but it felt like a hand reaching inside me, gently and caressingly weaving a cocoon around my heart, feeding the chasm that it had helped create between me and the world outside. Like, you can stay right here. Like, where else will you go? Like, who else could love you like I do?

It knew everything I knew; believed everything I believed.

Or was it the other way round?

It grew in appetite too, of course. It needed to, to sustain. And wouldn’t I want my friend to live, to thrive? It nibbled and gnawed – a little here, a little there. It bored deeper, settled into the gapes and gashes, until it had become a part of my flesh.

#

I have wondered for some time if the pilgrim would perish soon like its brethren, but it thrives in its new environment – in me. With no cannibalistic threat to its existence, perhaps its lifespan is longer than one could imagine. I worry if it’ll exceed mine – and how it will survive if it does. Will it find a new friend? Flesh that’s warmer than mine in death? In whispers, it assures me that death is no obstacle, that it’ll follow me anywhere. A comforting thought, to have a friend in death. Any loneliness I feel against the world is offset by the soft, familiar pull of sleepy indulgence the pilgrim offers.

#

Last night, a particularly melancholy night – adulthood is full of these – the pilgrim crawled closer and closer still, fighting off the tears in my eyes that hadn’t sprung yet, settling on my left eye, the one more prone to watering. An excellent choice .

A comfortingly oppressive weight.

A sharp sting.

The pilgrim nibbled its way through my eye, eating away at the tear glands. I heard the squelch and splurt of its activities – in the air and inside my skull. It worked its way through the membrane, the eye, the glands, until everything had been sucked dry.

A long moment of pain.

Relief.

I’d have conveyed my gratitude, but I suspect it knew I was thankful. I suspect it wouldn’t stop even if I was not. It has claimed already so much of my flesh, so many of my thoughts, the lines between where I end and where it begins are blurred; they don’t exist.

How could I deny it its entitlements?

This morning, I see a gaping hole where my left eye used to be. As I ready to leave for work, the pilgrim climbs up and into it, settling into the hole, fitting it awkwardly, almost comically. It must look natural, because at work and on the streets, no one seems to have noticed. I don’t miss the left eye; the pilgrim has stepped into its role, seeing one-half of the world for me. It no longer needs to show me truths in whispers.

The pilgrim is the truth.