Honeybees on a poet's head

 

Bookish guys are usually lazy. Poetic in a practical world; grandly aloof, musing over time’s mossy transience. So I find myself congratulating India for its digital platforms to provide online financial and administrative services. I’m elated the moment I come to know that I need not go to the district court premises to get my driving license (DL) renewed. It can be done online. It feels like a gift. Wow! So I apply in high spirits. I pay the fees and upload all the required documents. Now I just have to wait for a brand new DL. I keep checking for the latest status of my application. But the process doesn’t move ahead. It shows the same ‘document scrutiny’ stage for more than three weeks. So I go to the district mini-secretariat with all my application printouts in a file, just like one does in an offline application.

As I’m walking towards the e-Disha Kendra, located on the sprawling district secretariat campus, a man comes running. ‘Bumblebees are here! They are attacking people!’ he shouts a warning to me. I see big bumblebees reconnoitering the air for human enemies. I take a turn and start moving away by the side of the block towards the more crowded place of steno kiosks, notaries and lawyer chambers. The ratio of the enemies per bee would be high there. They have targeted a man. He is crying for help, flailing his arms to ward them off. They are biting him with more force in greater numbers. It’s like getting stuck in a quagmire. The more you flail your limbs, the more you get stung.

Someone has started a smoky fire to deter the natural drone attackers, known for their volatile temper and painful stings. Two soldier bees are stuck in my hair on top of head on the right side. They furiously buzz their wings. I know the rule. Never move your hands to ward them off. If you do so, you are instantly locked as the target and hundreds of bee fighters would attack you. So I walk like Dr. Manmohan Singh, keeping my arms stuck to my sides, not moving my torso in any direction or angle. The disciplined, non-threatening walk of an academician.

I can hear the man who has been attacked shouting, ‘Hai they are eating me, please save me!’ You can hardly do anything to help someone in this situation even with the best of your philanthropic emotions. The bees in my hair are angrily buzzing but I keep my arms jutted to my sides. Dozens are hovering around me. The moment I swipe my hand to get the bees off my head, they will pin me down as the next target. When I feel that I’m safe in a narrow corridor I start brushing with a soft hand, my fingertips barely touching the hair, to get the bees away. They unleash the entire stock in their weaponry on my head. Bumblebees sting very painfully. For an instant I go numb with pain. But I’m successful in getting rid of them. Thankfully I haven’t been spotted striking their soldier friends by the other bees.

I hastily cross a narrow strip of lawn between the blocks to move towards another section, the older blocks which aren’t spacious and airy like the one that I have just crossed. It’s an old, claustrophobic, musty, rusty maze. It makes me feel more secure as I move into its outer corridor.

An old man and an old woman, husband and wife visiting the courts for some official work, emerge from the new, spacious block. The bees have entered its main lobby. The old couple has broken the rule. They are panicked and vigorously waving their hands above their head and around their face to keep the bees off. Hundreds are hovering around them attacking and stinging at free will. To make it still worse for the man (in comparison to his wife, who is waving just hands), he is forcefully waving a cloth in the air around him. It invites bigger attacks. The woman shouts feeble cries for help. The man is simply focused on beating with the piece of cloth. They are tired. They walk a few steps and sit on the ground almost giving into the bees.

Everyone is at a loss about what to do. I shout and ask them to keep moving towards our side. The man seems to have surrendered. He can barely walk. The woman performs slightly better. She keeps pleading in a helpless tone, ‘Pour water! Pour water on us!’ But where is water? I feel utterly helpless. What to do? I can feel their pain but what to do. A young man comes rushing out from the new block. He is waving a black piece of cloth around him to avoid getting stung. He has a mosquito repellent spray bottle in hand. The bees attack him also. He is spraying clouds of mosquito repellent around the old man. But it’s almost ineffective.

Our family has a history of death due to bumblebee stings. My great grandfather was attacked by an entire swarm of bumblebees while returning from the fields after a hard day of tilling land. It was early 1890s and there was hardly any medical facility in the village at that time. He died because of excessive swelling which the village hakeem couldn’t manage. I feel on the upper right side of my head. There are two lumps. The crown of my head is numb.

The faces of the old couple are blood red due to multiple stings. By this time they seem to have given up to fate. You want to help but how? There must surely be better and more efficient ways of managing a bumblebee attack. At least I don’t have any clue. Neither has the district administration.

It’s a weighty fact that someone can be almost drawn to the portals of death right there in the middle of district administration centre, the axis of local police, judiciary and bureaucracy. Where you have the district collector, police superintendent, magistrates and judges. But the powerful authority is clueless as to how to help an old couple getting painfully stung by hundreds of bumblebees, crying for help while slowly moving from one block to the other. The response is just to watch, wait and allow the bees to stop stinging. Big cars, sirens, gun-toting guards, arrogance, systematic loot and plunder. All helpless in the face of a bee attack. The officers, judges and magistrates must be watching from safe, sealed windows.

The bees keep attacking the old man even while he has reached the crowded notary stalls. Finally the attacking squad dissipates. Someone takes the old couple to the hospital. I hope they have injections against bee bites. A thin plume of smoke is splaying the air as disaster management response.

I enter the block where my file needs to be submitted. There I stand with two lumps on my head holding an offline folder as a follow-up to the online application. I complain why wasn’t document verification done since I have uploaded all the required documents and the website says I need not visit the office physically. ‘Because you didn’t submit the file,’ the woman tells my curtly. ‘Then what’s the difference between offline application and online application?’ I’m about to ask. But I think the better of it. She might get offended and raise some unnecessary issue about the file, requiring more visits. So I keep mum and enjoy the offline process after having completed the digital version.