Velvet bugs

Sharmishtha Basu
9.8.12

I took birth in a place near Agra (The city where Tajmahal is), by name Tundla. I have not seen these bugs anywhere else, I don’t know if they were the descendants of some escapees from someone’s exotic collection but they are in one word the most beautiful bugs I have ever seen after butterflies.

They lived under the dry land of a field that stretched for miles after our Officer’s colony quarters, but a single splash of rain made them come out in hundreds, they looked like ladybugs made of velvet. They felt like velvet too, there is no other way their wings can be described- their size was of theirs, have not seen anyone bigger than a ladybug. Their colour was almost the colour I captured. So you can guess their beauty I believe.

We used to capture them merrily and bring them home, but they used dig out of every prison we created for them.

My elder brother created a fantastic prison for them but they evaded that too, most probably through the draining pipe. He used a concrete tub made for feeding cows, he created a fantastic wall of aquarium or window glasses (can’t remember the origin any more, I was barely eight or nine years old I guess) but the next morning they were not there.