When I first spotted them apparently snuggled together on the wall, romantically I thought, making no attempt to scuttle away as cockroaches are wont to, I was surprised. Like a time-honoured voyeur I moved in for a closer look and immediately wished I hadn’t. The larger partner, was eating the smaller one alive! As if to prove its point, it wrenched off the head of its victim and dragged the rest of it away. Oh well, I thought, cockroaches and cockroach heads can live for several hours (head only!) and weeks (the body) decapitated – or so I had read! Also they can withstand nuclear radiation fifteen times as much as we can, run at an equivalent of 200 mph, withstand pressures up to 900 times their body weight, and squeeze their bodies into infinitesimal cracks, live without food for a month, without air for 45 minutes and without water for three days! They have also been accused of snacking on soft earwax, nibbling at the eyelashes of sleeping children and investigating toenails for tasty what – toe jam?
They are scavengers largely and will eat just about anything – book binding, leftovers, skin flakes, cellulose and love to indulge themselves with sips of beer. They will leave a characteristic unpleasant, unhealthy odour behind them which can cause children to get asthmatic attacks. Some however have more refined taste.
Recovering from surgery years ago in a gloomy Government hospital in Mumbai, I was in the ICU, the left side of my chest raw and stitched up in three places, a tube poking out of my side voiding some disgusting fluid – not a prepossessing prospect. Ah but then there was lunch to look forward to: a ward boy turned up with a thali laden with rice, dal, vegetables, papad and dahi. And also, carefully circling the rim of the thali a gigantic mahogany coloured cockroach, its feelers waving as if it were a Michelin starred chef taking in whiffs of exotic spices. I pointed it out, and the ward boy casually flicked it off with a finger, and said, ‘khao’ (eat). On the floor the roach probably made for the unemptied sloshing bedpan lying under the bed, for a refreshing pint.
Thankfully, of the over 4500 species of cockroaches in the world, only 30 deign to timeshare with us. Of these, the big four are the American cockroach, obviously XXL on its diet of discarded hamburgers, cheeseburgers and hot dogs; the German cockroach (small scuttler); the Australian and the Asian – not surprisingly considered the dirtiest. And given good baby-care facilities a pair can produce 2 to 3 million babies every two years, not to mention have babies in space. Some lay eggs and some give birth to live young.
Their tough shiny exoskeletons are wax covered and they are built like tanks. Swat a roach and it might flip upside down and wave its legs around weakly – ah you think, job done. Not quite, hours later it’s still alive and when you flip it over again, it will with as much dignity as possible move away to a safer location. Needless to say they are mostly impervious to pesticides.
Most household roaches live in the bathroom or kitchen, scouting around at night, and will flee when the lights are switched on, but some dadas may fly in from the dark and scare the bejesus out of you as they thump down in the pool of light cast by your reading lamp.
All this seems to build up our case for their total extermination, no matter how. But most species live on forest floors and many are quite beautiful. Even the household roach is a handsome dude – what with its lacquer like mahogany finish. More than that, however, they perform a vital function in the forest. Being scavengers, they eat the dead and decaying and in doing so free the nitrogen trapped in those bodies via their poop. This liberated poopy nitrogen is vital for the health and well-being of plants, trees and the entire forest which would die out without it.
Though they do not bite or sting, most people are either horrified by, or petrified of roaches. But they have their aficionados also – in Japan (where else?), there’s a zoo where ‘cockroach petting sessions’ are held twice a week, and cockroach races have been organized in many countries around the world.
The Chinese, of course, believe they have medicinal qualities and in Thailand, they are considered a protein-rich snack when sautéed, deep fried, broiled or boiled: crisp on the outside, succulent on the inside. You can also enjoy a cup of cockroach tea.
Other creatures too, like lizards, snap them up and there’s a particularly unpleasant wasp that will anesthetize a roach, drag it to its lair and lay an egg on it. Its larvae will then have a 24-hour supply of fresh cockroach meat to thrive on.
Long ago, as an idiot schoolboy, I once kept cockroaches in my pocket and would palm them off to girls in order to gross them out and show how ‘macho’ I was. Of course, it did, but frankly that’s not the best way to get girlfriends. Another time, when the kitchen was suddenly overwhelmed with a teeming influx of cockroach babies, I made myself a cup of coffee… There were tiny brown things on the rim of the mug, which I took to being coffee powder. ‘Not so,’ my niece said gleefully, ‘those are cockroach babies, you just had a coffee cockroachie.’ I’ve had to stop having coffee, (for other reasons) but am very careful when I sprinkle cocoa powder over my vanilla ice-cream or make crumbly chocolate brownies.
