The Millipede

By Chintakindi Srilakshmi

A shrub of pinwheel flowers shades me in the backyard, parched grass all around. Nana’s muffled snores make their way through the mesh.

A genteel breeze blows, bringing with it the scents of soap nuts and sliced raw mango desiccating in the ardent afternoon rays.

A palm squirrel scurries along the wall,

goats graze on the other side.

My hand rises to pick a flower, but my eyes detect movement, then discern a millipede.

A millipede up a shrub. Why is it up a shrub? It trickles a few steps forward, pauses, turns, so awkward, again trickles some steps onward. It is confused, considering the way down.

I too am confused; the word ‘they’ coming to tongue at the legion of legs working in tandem, so sophisticated a nervous system for so simple a species. Indeed ‘they’ is most eligible, best conveying its ambiguous gender.

It would be entirely easy, lifting them from branch to leaf litter,

where they could crawl away to safety. But it could be altogether alarming, instincts alerting of getting preyed upon. And it could be drastically disorienting, so abruptly dumped in a different direction.

Resisting the pull of the human saviour complex, the urge to anthropomorphise, I leave them to decide their life—as it should be, sapiens aware of their place in the ecological macrocosm.

I pick my flower and let capture my gaze, a colony of garden ants growing their territory through Nani’s pansies.

By Chintakindi Srilakshmi