One swift stroke

Every time the media breaks out into frenzy about a piece of art being in the eye of a controversy, the phrase that inevitably springs to my mind is ‘stirring a hornet’s nest’.
It leaves me flummoxed. Why would anyone, unless they were insane or suicidal, actually want to go stirring up a hornet’s nest? Not even someone as myopic as I am would.

My association with bees and wasps is long and extended. Ever since childhood, a combination of my short sightedness, curiosity and innate clumsiness (all congenital traits) have caused me to be the recipient of many stings.

In time, I have learnt to deal with it as assiduously as one can while hopping on one foot in utter agony: a piece of shallot rubbed on the sting area, calamine thereafter, followed by anti-histamine and anti-inflammatory medication. In less than an hour, I am back to my bumbling self: leaning to sniff at a flower and sticking my nose into an angry bee’s face; perching precariously on a water tank ladder and watching helplessly as a colony of wasps make a wasp line for me.

But even I tread carefully when it comes to hornets. A month ago, amidst a clump of bamboo in my garden, a ball like thing buzzed ominously. For a week all of us stood many feet away and looked at the hornet’s nest. The hornet queen is a crafty little thing chewing up barks of trees to form the first layer of cells. An egg is laid in each cell.

Two weeks later, the first generation of many mean hornets are ready to take on the world. I was quite content to leave it alone but as the nest grew, so did the concern about the humans and animals who needed to use that part of the garden, until a local expert advocated the best way to deal with hornets was to burn the nest down in the dark. I am not sure about the ‘dark’ factor and whether this is because hornets can’t see in the dark or it is meant to lull the nest-burner into a state of false calm.

It seemed to work. The expert lit up his torch and touched the nest with its burning end. Pop. Crackle. Ashes. The end. Perhaps this is how controversies ought to be dealt with. Kill it in one swift stroke rather than speculate, stir and cause needless distress.
  
Anita Nair is the author of the novels A Better Man, Ladies Coupe and Mistress.