Member-only story
The Bengali Cockroach
A short story
Mr. Telapoka, the big, winged cockroach fretted and sniffed, muttering to himself, “Where in the world am I? Here is no dust and filth anywhere around the house, and no spices and not a piece of fishbone in the trash? How can I survive?”
Indeed, where was the Bengali cockroach? He was in an apartment in New York, the USA. Stepping back to a streak of luck that the insect found, one that millions of human Bengalis would have cherished, he had entered the dreamland of America without paying a penny or immigration officers in the way. And the journey had begun in the dawn, from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.
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On that particular day, by the play of fate, the Bangladeshi cockroach was on the flight of Qatar airlines, its final destination to New York. Called ‘Telapoka,’ in Bengali, and meaning ‘cockroach,’ the insect found itself traveling to America after it ventured into the suitcase of a girl flying to the States. It was light winter night in Dhaka. For Mr. Telapoka it was the usual food hunting hours, and getting into boxlike things was his favorite part for the experience has taught him that humans kept their most of the delicious food inside boxes. While the fridge was filled with mouthwatering food and was out of his reach, the storage places in the kitchen pantry was a good hunting ground. As it happened…
