It was the first week of the month. The spacious hall of the bank was brimming with people, most of them having come to withdraw money for their monthly expenses. There were others thronging various counters for other purposes. I was seated in one of the cabins, discussing something with a bank official. Business was as usual.
Suddenly, we heard a loud scream from one of the cabins. I rushed out to see what had happened. The entire crowd was jolted. People froze in their positions. The cashier quickly locked the cash drawer and then his cabin and rushed out. The bank’s armed guard readied his gun and took the position to fire. He cast a hurried glance at the crowd to locate the source of the shriek. The bank manager rushed out of his cabin and ordered the guard to lock the main door immediately. The usual buzz of the crowded hall was replaced with complete silence as people waited with bated breath.
Then we realised that the source of the hullabaloo was inside one of the cabins — a young bank official, a lady, who must have been in her early 20s but wore the innocence of a teen. Petrified as she was, the lady still held a ball pen in her hand and was quivering with fear.
The concerned branch manager asked her: “What happened?”
Pointing towards the three-foot high wooden closet behind her seat she mumbled, “Chhip ... chhipkali (lizard)”.
People who suspected an attempted bank robbery heaved a sigh of relief. “My goodness!” exclaimed the manager, giving her a curt look. An office peon looking for some documents in the closet told the boss that he had noticed termites eating up the papers. As he was cleaning it up, a lizard came out, wriggling its way by the lady’s side, and disappeared somewhere. However, the lady strongly refuted the peon’s version and claimed that the lizard ran up her ‘churidar’ (an Asian dress) before jumping and vanishing. She said she had felt the lizard’s claws on her skin. Her face had turned pale as she described her imagined experience.
While she was still quivering in fear, many of the onlookers were smiling sheepishly at the unusual spectacle. The embarrassed manager went back to his cabin, asking the lady to take a break before going back to her seat. Soon after, the atmosphere once again became normal. The lady official was a typical case of Herpetophobia — fear of reptiles, mainly snakes and lizards — which is not uncommon. Many people suffer from this kind of phobia. Some detest even viewing them in photographs. Ordinarily, one does not come in direct contact with the common domestic lizard, mainly because it eludes humans and its predators. However, a person accidentally touching it runs the risk of contracting the highly toxic poison from its skin which can kill. There have been innumerable cases of people dying or getting seriously ill on consuming foodstuff contaminated by a lizard.
Interestingly, those suffering from Herpetophobia do not know why they fear lizards. They say they know it won’t bite, but they dread its very sight. After the lady at the bank had calmed down, the young official told me: “It is grotesque, ugly and very dirty, causing giddiness. Have you observed how it looks at you with its popping black eyes — as if it would eat you up like those insects?”
With a growing kid’s innocence that was quite amusing, she asked: “How can you say it won’t have bitten me? If it had, I would have been dead.” Her strong views did not leave any scope for argument. So, I gave up and dittoed her assertion. Incidentally, one good thing about the episode was that it led to thorough cleaning up of the bank premises.
Strangely, dogs and cats that reign supreme in many homes, more as family members than mere pets, also have detractors. While their lovers shower their affection on these pets by running their fingers through their fluffy hair or even kissing them, the same hairy coat scares one of my neighbours — a lady again. A chill runs through her nerves on seeing someone fondling an animal. So much so, that she does not want to touch even the life-size stuffed dog bought by her husband for their child.
I know of a distant relative who would not come out of the house because he feared the clouds would enter his room and harm him. I was told that he got the problem after watching fast-moving dark clouds. He, being the sole bread earner, his family suffered for a long time until a psychiatrist turned him into a friend of the same clouds. After getting cured, he himself narrated it to me. What would you call it?
Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.
