The Dead Butterfly On My Terrace

I found a dead butterfly on the hard concrete floor of my terrace, being eaten by a group of ants. I crouched down and stared for a second. Beautiful, I thought. Its upper wings were slightly bigger; it was as big as my thumb. It was pretty monotone for a butterfly, at least from my understanding. Small black specks decorated the wings, and it was still intact.

I quickly picked it up by the end of one of its wings, and gently shook it off to get rid of the ants feasting on it. I had to preserve it, for it was beautiful and also one of the first ones I would get to keep. Because it was either considered too creepy or heartless by some people, how can you? The poor butterfly is dead. How can you just keep it? Or simply weird or even nasty to some. At other times, I simply couldn't find one intact enough to be preserved, and sometimes when I did find one, it somehow ended up being stepped on by someone.

As I was lost in my thoughts, the ants seemed to be feasting still, and some were feasting on my hands too. I dropped the dead butterfly, gentle enough not to damage it, yet strong enough for the ants. It took a couple of drops to make the ants leave, then I took it to the small room on the terrace and laid it flat on the sewing machine table to try and take a good look at it. The body was pretty intact, just wrinkled or half-eaten. A few legs and one antenna were missing; another antenna was half-eaten.

I didn't know how to preserve it; I didn't have any tools. So I decided to keep only the wings and tried to use a small knife to gently cut the wings, but it was too blunt. Then I scrambled through the sewing machine's box and found a pair of cloth scissors, a million times bigger than the little dead fellow. But I had to work with what I had, and I just did my best. It took multiple drops of the little fellow on the table and a few patches of the wings being slightly damaged for me to manage to get it done. But finally it was done.

I took the body and went back to the place I found it, and the ants were still there, mourning their huge stolen feast, while some lamented their loss in another puddle, just a couple of inches away. I decided to play God and just give back their feast. They were happy. The ants must like me, I thought.

Then I was reminded of the ant, an entirely different species, which somehow ended up on the sewing machine and tried to eat the butterfly while I was trying to cut the wings. I killed it by crushing it because I had to protect my butterfly, dead one, of course. Maybe I played God quite well.

Anyways, the ants still feasted on the dead butterfly. Poor thing must have never thought that once it died, someone would take its wings and feed it to ants, but it ended up happening. Then I looked up at the silent spectators, my dear companions, the crows. They seemed to like it, for they had already been fed, their usual meals. Yet they had to go get their biscuit crumbs from the always-open tea shops. And somehow all of them seemed to have agreed that the white, pink and blue “soulless” house, as we had agreed upon earlier, was now good enough to rest on.

Maybe I was left behind on something, or my crows forgot to tell me, because for the first time, I saw a couple of crows on the terrace of that house, and surprisingly, a middle-aged woman, ordinary-looking, hair up in a bun and a cotton saree, just collecting and folding her dried clothes from the second-floor balcony, as she just watched over the town. Another set of clothes was put out to dry on the first-floor balcony. It was surprising, but not weird. Maybe it wasn't so soulless as I thought. Maybe I just never saw it at the right time.

As the sun began to set, I had to go. Though the church lights weren't lit, the usual prayers weren’t playing. My companion stayed, yet I had to go, because I no longer stayed here; I just visited this town.