Like most big buildings in Kathmandu, the one I live in has a lot of cockroaches in it. In our flat they seem to be mostly small and few in numbers, possibly due to the restaurants downstairs. The only really big on lives in the bathroom behind the shelving unit. It's usually not visible apart from late at night. Every time I see "him" I feel a sense of sadness, not due to the inevitability of taking such a birth myself in future, but just how sad he looks. People hate cockroaches in an excessive way. Every time I see him, I see every person who has ever been despised ever, and for whatever plethora of just or unjust reasons. And it's simply sad.