THE PARLIAMENT OF BUGS

By M. S. Gopalakrishnan, M.A.

WHEN you get no sleep, dear Reader, I do not know what you do to gain rest or kill time. But I am certain that you must be doing something, either be reading fiction or preparing yourself to fight the mosquitoes and bugs in your apartment. Though I deem it impertinent on my part to interrogate you as to what you do to spend the sleepless hours of the night. I consider it a pleasure to confess one of my many experiences to you.

It was indeed a white night for me. I tried all means to get sleep; I was not successful. So I got out of my bed and lit the lantern, deciding to pass the full and heavy hours of the night in reading a famous novel by Andre Gide.

I sat upright on my bed and began reading. When I was finishing the fourth chapter I heard the clock striking two and my dreamy eyes casually fell on the top of the wall before me. Believe me, it is not a figment of my imagination. What I saw surprised me. We all know we have our Parliament to legislate for us. But I learnt that hour that the bugs too had an assembly of their own. Gentle Reader, it was the Parliament of bugs that I witnessed.

A few were crawling over my shoulders. I could not catch them. On the edges of my pillows I found half a dozen. A few were done to death by me. There is truth in the statement of a well-known psychologist that the instinct for murder is present in the human mind to a righteous extent. I call it righteous because we are all incapable of righteous indignation. This kind of anger belonged only to Jesus, the Saviour of Sinners.

To what category could my indignation against the bugs be applied, it is for you to judge and decide. I know I committed a sin which even the gods would never hesitate to pardon. So my courage had its meaning and my act had its necessary satisfaction. Still I was restless, as restless and impatient as the many bugs I saw busy everywhere.

What a miserable night? I muttered. An instinct to burn the whole assembly took possession of me. But I couldn't find the resolution to do it. I presumed that I was a little philosopher. That meant I was a pacifist. My love should embrace the child in the womb and the unborn bug alike. I began introspecting. Who am I? Who is the bug? Or, what am I? What is the bug? Have we kinship with each other?

No. Darwin had not said that we had a common ancestor. I am the process in evolution of an anthropoid ape which still evolves with no conception of any kind of end anywhere, here, below or above. But what am I to the bug? It has a perfect, cultivated taste for the blood of man. It has a Parliament to decide its affairs. It is not very complex in structure. We inhabit many nations and so there arises the necessity for international relations. The affairs of the bugs are only with the rational animals.

Why is it that they cherish the human blood at the expense of their lives? Man eats varieties of victuals which enrich his blood. The different tastes of the different types of food articles must naturally be present in that blood which attracts the serious intelligence of an industrious bug. So the bug cannot but live on the blood of man. It means that the bug is related to man’s blood and not to the vaporous spirit in him. Besides, the philosophies of the world proclaim that there is what is called an Universal Soul in which the individual soul merges in the end as the different streams merge in the ocean. I have an individual soul. The bug has life if I do not kill it. It has an individual soul. Any person could assassinate me as I could assassinate a bug. This means that both bug and man merge in the Universal Soul. So there is no liberty for me to kill it. Had the gods known that in this manner or by this logic we two are related, why should I think that the gods would never hesitate to pardon me if I annihilate them? Why is it that Darwin could not see this truth? I have seen it. I am superior to Darwin. Here comes my ego. But has the bug an ego? There is no answer. Only a complete desertion of thoughts, culminating in a fantastic, self-conceived belief.

I perceived that my thinking apparatus was getting weaker in carrying out its functions. I could think no more. I believed in what the sages call the inner voice or the voice of the conscience. I had no time or patience to know what this conscience is made up of. Psychology has no interest for me though in myself I am well interested. Although a firm believer in the rule of the intellect I was forced to hear the voice of the conscience in me. I submitted myself to that voice which had all the crafts of a nagging wife. Came a volley of questions which I had to answer categorically, dead to an sense of shame or dignity.

CONSCIENCE: Friend, do you know who I am?

EGO: You are my guide. Are you not my Conscience?

CON: Yes, it is my voice you are hearing at the present moment. Do you know who you are?

EGO: I know I am a man with an intellect noted for its shrewdness in doing a thousand acts which would irritate the devils and the gods alike to pour down their curses.

CON: Good. You seem to be too proud of your strength. Do you believe in rebirth? And that you are one reborn?

EGO: I have faith in the ancient scriptures. I have veneration for scholars who could expound them. They say we are reborn into a state which Destiny ordains for us. So I think by the Will of Destiny I too am reborn.

CON: Do you know what Destiny is?

EGO: My acts, my thoughts, my life.

CON: Do you know that your thoughts and acts, I mean your life, lead you to an end?

EGO: I know that end. I call it the effects of causes, the results of actions.

CON: The end of life is death. The end of death is life. The seed is in the plant as the plant is in the seed. This is a high secret, the value of which starving ascetics presume to know.

EGO: I believe what you say. But could you reveal to me what I was in my previous birth?

CON: It is impossible. But I should apply the methods of elimination and selection to find the worth in your present survival. What thoughts occupy you most of the time for a day of twenty-four hours?

EGO: The presence of the bugs before me. You look at that Parliament of theirs. They have communism in property and sex. They are not afraid of death. I attempted to find how they are related to me. I couldn't arrive at any conclusion. It is for you to apply now those scientific methods to find the affinity between us. You are steeped in tradition, mythology and superstitions. You have learnt to obey masters and believe fictions as facts and events in real life. Tell me who I am and who I was?

CON: Well, my dear friend, I was with you in your previous birth. But I was wicked and impure. Circumstances were not favourable in that birth for you to lead a righteous and normal life. You were in the grip of poverty. You had to live on the charity of your friends. You took loans promising you would repay them, but everyone knew that your words carried no weight. Creditors stood at your doors with pale faces. Not a copper piece was returned as a symbol of integrity and honesty. You knew no gratitude, no courtesy; your craftiness had no limits; you were as wretched as these bugs are and these are your creditors.

EGO: What! My creditors! My God!

CON: Friend, you have no right to possess what is not yours, what is not offered to you by the Almighty. You fed on the sentiments of others; and now you have no power to squash these bugs. For what you could not offer in the shape of things having economic values, you have to offer your life, the blood-stream which sustains you. Offer these bugs your life, your blood. Offer in life what you failed to offer before death.

What a sinner! What a Parliament of Bugs plotting the massacre of the human cells!

It is morning. I should get up and see that the walls are white-washed soon.

Back