My Picture in Ant Heaven :)

Sitting at the back of the house, at the door facing the well - your favorite place at your parents’ house -  and removing skins from roasted groundnuts to make chutney powder, one sunny evening. You can watch and hear birds, squirrels and butterflies from here.

And then you see a big black ant dragging half a groundnut which had fallen from your plate. You watch it drag the huge piece [in proportion to its ant-size], and go quite some distance, towards the car-shed wall on the right. You are waiting to see where its house is. And then you remember that this was one of your major occupations during childhood. Watching ants, following their trails to find out where they lived. (Well, we didn’t have TV in the 70s :))

And then you see him trying to lift it up a straight wall [just an enclosure for plants, in human terms]. He struggles up, walking backwards, dragging huge groundnut. At the third attempt he makes it to the top of this wall, after much falling. Then he has to climb again, this time a taller wall. You watch with bated breath, stopping your groundnut work.  By this time, this has become your problem too :)

He climbs and he climbs - and when he is right at the top - he falls all the way back - to the ground, even below the first wall! Shucks. And he tries again. The second time he falls, just when he is almost there, after much effort and change of angles and tactics, you cannot take it anymore. You go get a dry jackfruit tree leaf, try to scoop him up with the half-nut from the mid-way he had reached. You get the nut, but he leaves it and runs away down. You are disappointed, but keep the nut on the top of the wall where he wanted to take it.

And then he comes racing up. Goes off under the cactus pot. You think oh hell, he abandoned it, it was all a waste. And then you see him coming back - maybe he went in to consult the Queen? - goes in the wrong direction, then returns, drags the nut and goes under the pot effortlessly. Apparently that's where he lives. End of struggle. The nut is home.

Whew! You haven't felt this useful in ages. You feel more happy than you have felt in ages. Seriously - everything else you do, other people can do, and possibly better. But how many people do you know who are into Ant Food Transportation, a niche profession? :)

And then it all comes back to you -  you used to do this all the time when you were a kid. Following ants and watching them struggle to lift loads too big for them, and then helping them when you figure out that their struggle is going to end in failure. It had to be done very carefully, without frightening them off. Entire afternoons would go in this, crawling behind ant trails, engrossed and oblivious to anything else. And there are plenty of ant colonies in this part of the world, so you were  never out of work. :)

Had totally forgotten this important role you had played in your life, until this incident. So it wasn't a completely useless life after all. In Ant Heaven, probably there's a picture of you, where ants come and place crumbs in thanksgiving :)

October 2008

Picture from Google Images