ABU. To Be Who You Are. A. Manvayler

to get a cockroach. Besides, that Indian cockroaches are huge, they also can fly. Abu knew that they multiply uncontrollably and he didn’t let them in our house. But ants caused me most troubles. Just a drop of something sweet and ten minutes were enough to get invaded. Usually, they intensify before monsoon starts. Intuiting the coming of hungry and difficult times, the running crowds of these insects store all around, what their hardworking feet can only get. I had an allergy for them, almost same as Keith with bees.

      Abu explained that actually ants don’t bite but protect themselves with a help of their poisoned acid which they produce automatically like scared people produce adrenaline, but it didn’t make it easier for me. Abu used to apply Tulsi oil or a toothpaste on my burns which helped to minimize the healing process up to several days. And in his kidding manner said that it could have been worse, “Do you remember how many times Serj has been bittten by ants for his manhood? And you can’t apply paste there.” The unlimited life experience of aborigines in this land full of wonders and fairy tales never ceased to admire me. Abu’s encyclopedic knowledge with each new opening surprised me.

      Spiders constantly spun their webs under our ceiling. Since we lived on the top floor, a sloping roof began exactly above our heads. In other words, a ceiling height from one side was two and a half meters and from another all four. Because of this difference in height, the flat looked bigger, but to clean spiderwebs was quite a thing. Of course, we found the most extreme way out of this situation: I climbed onto Abu’s shoulders with a mop in my hands, and in such a manner we did the dry and wet cleaning in the places most difficult to access of our flat.

      During such cleanings, I recited extracts from “Buzzy-Wuzzy Busy Fly” of Chukovskiy loosely translated by me into English. Surprisingly Abu got fond of the tiny but brave mosquito, and it was not unusual to see him waving a mop with this twinkle in his eye causing us the thunder of a hearty belly laugh. And squint he said to me: “You’re my best.. pest!” I took it as a compliment until I found out the actual meaning of this phrase. And again we were chasing each other all over the house until I could catch him in the bedroom, where Abu lured me in for being caught on purpose. And after we were making love with such tenderness and spirit freshness, that one might think, love was invented by us for the very first time in this sunny and hot south country.

      What to say, with this kind of study I acquired the basics as well as the nuances of the language extremely fast. I never felt bored with Abu and with joy I kept on living my fairy tale. Leading such lifestyle we were becoming more and more used to each other with full awareness of how lucky we were to meet. Morning chai was our favourite tradition. One day I slowly came into the kitchen to turn on the teapot, and sudden of all made eye contact with a small bug-eyed mouse. It was sitting on the shelf with powders and granulated products, where tightly closed plastic containers filled with spice and cereals were standing. The flour we bought just recently, unfortunately, turned out to be without a lid. This mouse had already made a mess of it quite a bit. I shouted loudly: “Abu! Come here! Fast! Look, there’s a mouse here!” Entered the kitchen, Abu acted in a moment, grabbed a stick from the nearest corner and struck the flour bag where the mouse was seating. For sure, the mouse was not in the mood to sit and wait for her sooner death and ran away as soon as it noticed Abu, furious like a lion. The next minute we both looked like two Yeti after an avalanche, and we were to clean the kitchen from the rest of the flour for the whole next two days.

      Although, later we caught all the mice with a mousetrap, as a result – minus four mice and plus two pleased cats under our balcony.

      We still had our chai straight on our balcony with the fresh-baked, soft and still warm bunswhich we bought from the street. Every morning an old man on the old, seen better days bicycle delivered them, honking a big rubber horn reminding a pharmacy syringe. With a rope we lowered a bag with cash and after raised it back already with the buns. Abu liked to eat them with salted butter and chai. It’s quite problematic to get unsalted butter in Goa, you can find it only in malls, and not always though. And when “a hard Goan winter” had come and the air temperature dropped up to plus seventeen at night, the old man on the bicycle used to appear wearing long pants, a towel wrapped around his head, but in open flip-flops. Such exotic always made me laugh.