The Plays
Global Warming [sample]
by Charles L. Mee
STANTON
Have you ever been to Howrah?
GALLEJAS
(After a moment.)
Across the Hooghly River from Calcutta.
STANTON
Yes.
GALLEJAS
(After a moment.)
Trading center.
STANTON
Since 1560.
GALLEJAS
Dusty roads.
STANTON
Old warehouses ...
GALLEJAS
Called godowns.
STANTON
That's the place, yes.
GALLEJAS
Street dwellers huddling under thin blankets at night.
STANTON
Yes. On cool evenings, sometimes, rats will crawl under the blankets,
apparently to get warm.
GALLEJAS
Evidently. We had a factory there.
STANTON
Yes. So do we. Some of the workers sleep in the godowns.
GALLEJAS
I did myself.
STANTON
Really?
GALLEJAS
Dark, dusty place, hot, made rather unpleasant by the cockroaches,
thousands of large brown ones, flew about in the dark and kept getting
into my hair.
STANTON
Nasty business.
GALLEJAS
Yes. At times, more than a hundred rats would be feeding in my room at
one time.
STANTON
Bandicoot rats, were they?
GALLEJAS
Lesser bandicoot rats, Bandicota bengalensis. The adults are seven and
a
half inches long, excluding the tail. Blunted snouts. Rarely more than
ten ounces in weight. Otherwise they resemble the Norway rat. You've
seen them, I'm sure.
STANTON
Of course.
GALLEJAS
Found from Nepal to Sri Lanka, from Pakistan to Indonesia.
STANTON
Extraordinary.
GALLEJAS
Dominant in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras.
STANTON
I should have thought so.
GALLEJAS
Feed on wheat, rice, garbage, insects, dead birds. Preferred wheat or
rice actually. Drank from the gutter, or sometimes from the nearby
latrines. At times I could watch them there drinking my urine.
STANTON
Really?
GALLEJAS
They didn't go out of their way to bother me, I must say. They
investigated me, of course, as they would any object, walking over me,
sniffing. Licking. That's all. Sometimes one of the boys I was with
would kick one of them, or even beat it to death.
STANTON
Really? Why was that?
GALLEJAS
No point to it, really.
