Kamal Ghorui
We must rethink our fear of the roach
If humans’ deep dislike had the power to wipe it out, the cockroach would be doomed. But it’s thriving. It’s gone to space. It’s even had babies in space. And given its established history of hitching rides on ships, planes, trains, one does wonder whether it did a similar jumperoo off the Russian bio-satellite mission where it had 33 babies. Could it now be populating some other part of the universe? Remember, it’s been on Earth since before the dinosaurs. Its surviving that extinction event underlines its resilience to hostile circumstances. The idea informs WALL•E too, where on an Earth desolated by ecocide, the titular robot’s only companion is Hal the cockroach. The two of them are cleaning the planet, all by their twosome self.
Cockroaches are, indeed, the essential decomposers of this planet. Their storied ‘dirtiness’ is completely at odds with this fact. Indeed, so intense, irrational, and overwhelming is many people’s fear of cockroaches that it has a word of its own: Katsaridaphobia. And some of the world’s worst atrocities have involved human beings conceptualising other human beings as roaches. Germany’s Nazis and Rwanda’s Hutus, both set the scene for mass killings, with such dehumanisation. But as David George Gordon establishes in The Compleat Cockroach, an exhaustive study of the creature, the extreme disgust response to cockroaches is 100% disproportionate to any actual threat they pose. And what is the classic antidote to irrational fear and hatred? Knowledge. To know the cockroach better, is to appreciate it, if not love it.
In India, research on cockroaches goes back two and half centuries. And it’s just identified a new species near Pune. That we are just finding out about Neoloboptera peninsularis, doesn’t mean it hasn’t always already been here for millennia. Who are we, then, to try to wipe them out by foul means? Those sprays with which we chase them, don’t just add poison to our homes, but basically cause extreme convulsions in the victim, who then flips over, and dies a needlessly painful, indeed sadistic, death. Why not choose more humane alternatives? This includes doing a more decent job of cleaning up after ourselves. Cockroaches are too ancient, and too implanted in Nature, for our negativity to crush them. It may be harming us more than them.
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