PiLANi PiCTURES: Insect side

Close your eyes for a moment and quickly think of an insect.
Done?

Recently, I watched a 3-D movie at a science museum. When one of the butterflies came fluttering out of the screen towards me, I could only fondly recollect MDK (My Dear Kuttichattan, 1984) I had seen on a big screen more than three decades ago. Some evergreen (3-D) memories: the slipping red cherry from the cup-ice cream that you thought you almost caught, dancing skeleton in the classroom and colourful balloons playing in the sky. Today I can only sit in awe of the vision that the MDK creators had. Those were the times we were coming to terms with the world of mindless masala movies struggling with basic camera tricks, and here was a man with guts and energy to make and release a regional 3-D movie. Vision. Hats off!

Coming to the science museum, though there were some butterflies and attractive flowers, the movie was on, hold your breath.. insects. Title: Bugs. Personally I like insects (I am not an entomaniac, btw) or at least I do not hate them. But as expected, most of the audience twitched and some even conveniently removed the 3-D glasses - when a mantis caught hold of a housefly-type insect and - pulled out its well-formed head with compound eyes et al, and clumsily munched it, while the headless fly-body was still trying to release itself and somehow perform its flight to freedom.

And it was not the only such scene. There was this robust green lizard that caught a grasshopper-type insect with its sticky tongue; there was this group of tens of insect eggs, yellowish in colour, translucent, and (in slo mo and in 3-D) the eggs were getting hatched one by one and a form of larva was coming out of each one of them; the larvae did not fall off; they were holding on to the leaf that had the eggs by a shiny, fine streak of thread made of glue.

Again, many took off their glasses.

Perhaps we are hardwired to hate insects or perhaps it has been taught when we were running around in diapers. Do we fear insects? Or is it just that they are repulsive to look at? Now coming to the question, what did you see when you closed your eyes? Most of us would have seen one of these - mosquito, housefly or cockroach. (Some, bedbugs too.) I too hate these forms, but there are millions of other insect species, that include the 'beautiful' ones like butterfly, honey bee, ladybird, damselfly, pullayar ant, etc.

I think too may things are at work here - our notion of 'beauty', our preference for bright colours and attractive patterns, the first insect that stung the caveman, the locust swarm that ate away our crops, mosquito - the deadly household partner, cockroach - the ruler of the dark nights, and so on. But whatever be the reason, it is better to start liking every scene of Bugs, if not for anything else, at least for the simple reason that - the insects form the majority in our planet. It is said the number of such creatures in just one square mile of the Amazon forests is more than the total number of human heads on our planet. And in a democracy, even a fool would like to be on the winning side.

Recommended viewing: