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.

***

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 favourite 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, that fateful night, Mr. Telapoka sauntered into the dimly lit hallway where a girl’s suitcase, with clothes, books, and food waited for the morning departure to the airport.

The girl, Mini, a student of State University of New York, was flying from Dhaka in the wee hours of the morning. When the alarm went off before dawn, she was quick in locking her suitcases and heading to the airport. And so, when Mini closed her case, Mr. Telapoka was already inside it. Drawn by the wafting smell of the rice-cake, he had settled for a feast. After eating a full stomach of the delicious, molasses filled rice cakes, Mr. Telapoka fell asleep, with no idea of where the suitcase was going within the next few hours. He heard nothing of the lock of the suitcase at dawn before Mini headed out of the house. Neither did he feel his sleeping place being lifted and placed in the car’s trunk. Mr. Telapoka was in a deep, deep sleep induced by previous night’s heavenly feast. When Mini reached the Dhaka airport, she had her security check, and nothing of the sleeping cockroach was seen in the scanning machine. The roach slept on, blissful, and happy, gently being lifted in the air after the boarding was done for the departing flight.

By the time Mr. Telapoka woke up, Dhaka was left behind, and Mini’s plane was headed to the next part of the journey. He was therefore already in the conveyor belt of the Qatar aircraft flying from Abu Dhabi to Logan airport in NY. He was inside the belly of the plane where the luggage was stored. But of course he had no idea of his flying home in the air. However, it was soon evident to Mr. Cockroach that there was no getting out of the closed space. Hence he went back to sleep. At least he had food to get by, and the rice cakes were tasty. Meanwhile the aircraft soared into the sky and flew over many lands and seas. Mr. Telapoka was totally oblivious to the distance from the Dhaka home to the grounds he was flying across. From time to time the insect woke up and tried to understand what was happening outside his closed space in the suitcase.

Traveling by air was a new kind of movement for Mr. Cockroach. His home did not move when he was in his Dhaka residence. But he was not surprised for with the humans, nothing was impossible. It was the same big Earth that they shared with the humans ruling over roaches and other insects he knew. Though cockroaches are supposed to hear changes in their hearing in the air currents and movements through their appendages, Mr. Telapoka was having a hard time thinking straight with the sound of the aircraft’s running engine. It was not a comfortable journey at all, and his tentacles got caught in the folds of clothes and books if he tried to move around. His brown wings, around an inch and half long were having problems from being crushed in the tight space. But the luggage section of the plane was warm, and Mr. Cockroach felt suffocated with the clothes, shoes, books, and other stuff Mini had packed into the suitcase. Insects of his species were super resilient to living conditions. And that meant he would have to keep himself alive. After eating several meals of rice cakes, Mr. Cockroach began to feel drowsy, and before his eyes closed with heavy sleep, he was hardly aware of the plane’s engine, his body was adjusted to the warmth in luggage section and his home in the air felt comfortable enough for whatever fate waited in the long run.

***

After what seemed ages, when Mr. Cockroach woke up, he could sense that he was moving on the ground, he could feel some kind of friction that was familiar to his Dhaka home. The lightness that he had felt in the aircraft was no longer there. In way it was more casual, but he was so, so cold! He wished it was in the warm, a humid place like the one he was used to and had no idea of where he had come inside Mini’s suitcase.

He was in fact in the back of a taxicab carrying Mini home from the airport to her apartment in Queens in New York. It was the height of a bitter winter in NY, and being in the suitcase didn’t help Mr. Cockroach, the freezing temperature outside was making him feel like ice that he had at times seen in the tables of Dhaka, the kind humans used to put into their drinks. ‘Am I becoming cold like that?’ Wondered the terrified Mr. Telapoka.

Luckily Mini reached her home soon and carried her suitcase inside the warmth of her apartment on the 30th Avenue. With the first chance of finding the case open, Mr. Cockroach crawled out and entered a kitchen cabinet. “Ah, finally some good food and a warm home!” He thought, as his eyes looked for something to eat. There were jars and while he could smell food inside it was impossible to get inside the firmly closed lid. The sugar packet was made of brown paper, but the outside was not soft like the Bangladeshi ones. He could not make a hole in it. The food cabinet did not have that welcoming spicy smell he was used to turmeric, coriander, or the musty smell of the mustard oil. In the new place no dry fish or Balachao, a ready-to-eat variety of dry shrimps, nothing. He moved out and without being noticed by Mini managed to move to the doorway, hoping to slip through the tiny space he could see beneath the door, But no sooner had he reached the door, blasts of cold air entering through the little space hit him and immediately he went back to the kitchen’s food cabinet. He felt sad at the bland state of food, bread left on the kitchen counter. The cooked rice in the rice cooker had few grains fallen that he could eat.

Mr. Telapoka had no idea that unlike homes in Bangladesh Mini, a student wasn’t planning to cook much in the hectic days of her new academic life in New York. Not curries or khichuri at least. Being inside Mr. Telapoka wondered how could God willfully make that immigration of the roach happen? He didn’t even want to leave Bangladesh.

Two or three days passed, and Mr. Telapoka was feeling hopeless. For him, life, after all was about eating and making the days and nights. And there was no food in the new home, not anything he liked. One evening thinking that all was safe, he ventured out to find the bread that was usually in the food cabinet. Perhaps he would try again to eat through the brown wrapping of the packet. He was on to this second or third trial when Mini came to the kitchen, and as she reached for the brown paper of the bread, Mr. Telapoka flew out and settled on the counter. He sat staring at the Bangladeshi girl with his rolling eyes and tried to give a ‘namaskar’ with his tentacles, which miraculously had reached America unbroken.

“Oh no, you look like a telapoka from back home in Dhaka!” Exclaimed Mini as she saw the roach. She was close to making a swoop at it with the roll of newspaper near her hand, but on the second thought, she stopped. A fond nostalgia gripped her, and she said, “ Oh no I can’t kill you. You are the only living thing from Bangladesh at the moment! You are a Bangali telapoka, the part of me here. Maybe I could find you an American cockroach to mate, and then I would be keeping your race going. But and then, are you a male or a female?”

Mr. Telapoka listened with full, rolling around faster than ever. Well, he was going to live, but when would he get a mate, an American one? He wished, so wished that whether he found a date or not, some Bengali cuisine would get going in Mini’s home. He missed the filth and dirt of Dhaka, the dust in the house that settled so cozily every day, and he missed the tons of leftover left in the trash can.

And so began the Bengali Telapoka’s life in New York, perhaps soon to become Bangladeshi-American, that is if Mini could find a mate, who was a citizen of the vast land.

Tulip Chowdhury writes from Massachusetts, USA.