The Cockroach Funeral

The 'Grand' funeral of the cockroach - it was grand for us and maybe for the cockroach too (if it were to watch it from heaven or anywhere it was supposed to be after death). We were just kids, maybe under class 4 (don't exactly r'mber). The members who conducted the funeral were myself, my sister, and two of our cousins. It was bit rainy that day and after the rains were over, we walked out to our playspot to check if some of our toys were left outside. But, what we could find was a cockroach dead (killed by the rain? or due to oldage!). We din't plan anything, but we all started doing something as we fixed our eyes and looked deeply onto the cocokroach. We placed the dead cockroach in the bed of an empty matchbox. We collected flowers from the garden and filled the empty sides of the matchbox with small flowers. Before these, we decided the place where the cockroach is to be burried. Though not a grave was dug, we cleaned the spot and creamed the area with white sand and placed lots of flowers all over the place, while at the other place, though v.near, the cockroach was being decorated. Now finally, a hole was made in the matchbox and a thread tied to it. With the other end of the thread in my hand and after decorations complete, I started pulling the rope thereby dragging the cockroach coffin to the place where we'd planned to place it. We could manage to get only some inches of thread from the spool and so there was not much space between myself and the coffin that followed me. Reaching the place, we took the box, covered it with more flowers, slowly put sand over it, built a small sand tomb on it, and stuck flowers on the tomb. We destroyed a lot of flowers that day, though we dint really feel we destroyed. (Away from topic, I really don't know what relation flowers had to any function. But it feels fine to have flowers everywhere). We prayed for the cockroach (don't r'mber what we prayed - one can expect what kids would pray). I can be sure now that I'd have prayed deeply and better than what I pray today. This was how the cockroach funeral happened.

We used to talk of such incidents that happened during our childhood whenever all of us got together. But this time, I remembered it sometime after I sprayed 'Hit' on a cockroach.

Everyone says, a child knows no harm and hurts none. Though simple, I can understand how mood and behavior changes and affects a person with age. Maybe it was our mood that day to conduct a ceremony, but today I don't even give time to think whether I should kill it or not.

Image Source: yellowfox.org.uk