Chance and Fortune

It was around 6.00 in the morning when my mobile went into its "supposed-to-be-alarming” melancholy. I pressed the snooze out of habit, knowing very well that the fifteen minutes was all that I had to revisit heaven at a glimpse. This state gives you the deepest and most peaceful sleep ever - those miraculous fifteen minutes. Ecstasy at its best! After the second spoiler in the form of a "nature's call", I had to give up on 5 minutes out of the fifteen. I made a deal to set my snooze time to 20mins for the next day - the only compensation I could think of in my "half wakeful" state. Once settled in place, I was doing the second most important thing after waking up(the snooze time is obviously the first). And when I'm attending to nature's call, I hate any kind of "creepy" interferences. I'll rephrase that as "creeping" ! The third spoiler of the day, came in the form of a 26(to be 36 soon) legged crawler which almost resembled a toddler coming towards "Mommy!". Unfortunately, I was stuck in one place, giving me no scope for movement( any of which could be disastrous in many ways! ;)) It was a milli -millipede( will be referred to as "the attacker" from now on), and by the size of it, it was either an abandoned kid or it had learnt the tactics of a good attack even while it was still in the mothers womb. The first line of defence I could think of was to stamp it with my "hawai-chappal" supported feet. I immediately dismissed the thought partly due to guilt and partly due to the uneasiness of squashing something with my "new bathroom slippers!:D" Hence I moved on to the second line of defense - Water. Since there was plenty in close proximity, I thought it would be a gentle move. All this plotting when my attacker was crawling towards me, inch by inch. And when I decided to go with the second defense, with a mug of water ready, the attacker retreated. Some luck! Maybe it was my feet or my legs or the contrasting colour of my “hawai” or let's get real – the unbeatable stench! Whatever be it, that moment I was relieved. I got into thinking. What if I had overreacted? What if I had lost my nerve and gone ahead with the first line of defense? What if I had made the first day of the milli-millipede its last day? The lucidity of it all came to me in one full blow! It is amazing when you start musing about such minute things. Every creature on earth is gifted with something or the other. Thinking about it, I don’t know how God really had all the patience to instill in every creature something special, something unique…Mind blowing! The world is made up of so many things – seen and unseen. And every minute, something ends its life willingly or is unwillingly made to end its life. One minute, one wrong move – that’s the end. But, if by some stroke of luck, the wrong move is not made, then its defiance of fate. So is this Karma? What makes this cycle go around? Still bemused by the karma of it all, I left to my room to try my hand at blogging these thoughts!

Milli Facts!

Pure Jargon

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Myriapoda

Better ones

This class contains around 10,000 species. There are 13 orders and 115 families.

The giant African millipede ( Archispirostreptus gigas) is the largest species of millipede.

A millipede has four legs on each segment of its body

Due to their lack of speed and their inability to bite or sting, millipedes' primary defense mechanism is to curl into a tight coil — protecting their delicate legs inside an armoured

The best! :) :)

Many species also emit poisonous liquid secretions or hydrogen cyanide gas through microscopic pores along the sides of their bodies as a secondary defense. Some of these substances are caustic and can burn the exoskeleton of ants and other insect predators, and the skin and eyes of larger predators. Animals such as Capuchin monkeys have been observed intentionally irritating millipedes in order to rub the chemicals on themselves to repel mosquitoes( Hahaha! I love this!)

" I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm"

- Franklin D. Roosevelt