the most amazing thing happened last night; after having posted the note about lac bugs as an afterthought on the blog, I opened up my book "The Palace of Illusions"** to the next chapter. The title was "lac", and the opening paragraph is below:
"In my dream, I was a lac insect. Like my hundred sisters, I attached myself to a new twig and drank its sap. I had no eyes, so I focused my entire impassioned energy on drinking. I drank and grew and secreted resin red as mud until I was covered with it, until we were all covered. Within my shell I held still and grew, like my hundred sisters, and within me grew eggs. The moon waxed full: once, twice, three times. The resin pooled and spread across the branches, turning them red until the tree seemed to be a dancing flame. The waiting villagers nodded. Yes, soon. The eggs hatched, a hundred new insects attached themselves to other trees, the villagers broke off the branches and scraped the resin clean, and sent it to Varnavat where Duryodhan had ordered a palace to be built for his five cousins.
(And I? I died. No need to mourn me. My work was done.)"
** by Chitra Banarjee Divakaruni: a feminist interpretation of the Mahabharata, through the eyes of the heroine Princess Panchaali (Draupadi). This paragraph refers to the lac from which the Pandavas palace was built --and eventually was burned down.
"In my dream, I was a lac insect. Like my hundred sisters, I attached myself to a new twig and drank its sap. I had no eyes, so I focused my entire impassioned energy on drinking. I drank and grew and secreted resin red as mud until I was covered with it, until we were all covered. Within my shell I held still and grew, like my hundred sisters, and within me grew eggs. The moon waxed full: once, twice, three times. The resin pooled and spread across the branches, turning them red until the tree seemed to be a dancing flame. The waiting villagers nodded. Yes, soon. The eggs hatched, a hundred new insects attached themselves to other trees, the villagers broke off the branches and scraped the resin clean, and sent it to Varnavat where Duryodhan had ordered a palace to be built for his five cousins.
(And I? I died. No need to mourn me. My work was done.)"
** by Chitra Banarjee Divakaruni: a feminist interpretation of the Mahabharata, through the eyes of the heroine Princess Panchaali (Draupadi). This paragraph refers to the lac from which the Pandavas palace was built --and eventually was burned down.
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