My very own pet (b)rat

This city is infested with rats. Anyone who has lived here a week knows that. They’re pretty much a part of the whole living-in-Mumbai experience, I’d say.

Think about it, how many other cities have “rat killers”? You walk the streets, see a crow pecking on a dead rat; it’s gross but it’s quotidian. It disturbs you, you look away, but that’s the extent of your reaction.

But when I spotted one in my house, I thought it would elicit a greater response. After all, such an invasion is hardly normal.
“There’s a rat in the kitchen,” I shrieked as soon as I saw it, and looked around instinctively for help. I live with four other people but I didn’t get so much as a squeak in response. Luckily I got nothing from the rat either — it just scampered off behind the fridge, sneaky little thing!

At the breakfast table the next morning, I decided to talk to my dad. After all, every patriarch deserves to know the full extent of the guests in his house — rodent or not, invited or not. He looked up at me lazily peeling his eyes off his daily broadsheet, nodded and began reading again.

In charge of the kitchen and everything in it, my mother, I hoped would give me a better response. She is the more animated one in the family after all. “Oh!” she exclaimed when I told her what I’d seen the night before, “but we’ve never had rats before! They can’t trek all the way up to the 13th floor!” I couldn’t argue with that kind of logic. When my brother (as usual) pooh-poohed me about it, I decided to lay the topic to rest.

No matter how indifferent I was to rats out on the street, the idea of having one in my home had felt like a serious violation to me. But as time went by, in true Mumbai style, I got over it. I never saw the rodent again, but now, every time I make a midnight trip to the kitchen I can’t help but wonder if one of the city’s rats has adopted our home as his own.

And each night I hope that instead of a city rat, our Bandra apartment is visited by a country rat — a la Ratatouille’s Remy of course!