The Designer Monkey,

Mahabali is a religious place where two sacred rivers meet head on and share their individual merits of holiness in a sort of amalgamation of purity of a spiritual sense
but sadly not in physical sense as each year more and more pilgrim come to bathe in its waters and leave their unholy dirt, for the rivers to carry forward a thousand miles to the sea.

  People bring ashes of their deceased loved ones to be scattered over the waters where their mortal remains get dissolve into the elementals of water and air and thus their spirit is released may be into a new kind of space and time conglomerations. A birth of a new entity or dissolution into a metaphysical dimension are the end products of imagination. The scattering of remains is officiated by the priestly class and there are plenty of personnel of that denomination dressed in yellow or orange robes scattered around, in a sort of visible badge of the priesthood. Years in practical art of spotting and catching their victims have given them an edge over the unlearned general public attitudes.

They can symbolically smell the relatives of the deceased, a mile away and as their livelihood depends upon idiosyncrasies of such victims, they are liable to be trapped by these adept priestly persons. Some of their kinds specialize in catching only the rich, innocent or  ‘think themselves clever ’relatives of the deceased. There is lot of money to be made from such ventures. Once they sight a victim, they will follow him endlessly, pestering them with the best compliments of the day. ‘It is a blessing to meet such a holy person, a devata in disguise.’ Or ‘ For eleven rupees, I will perform the puja to release the soul of your beloved departed one to a heavenly place.’

Nothing disturbs them as they are the masters in ignoring all the insults and harsh words offered by their victims and as psychologist they know that once a person has vented his anger on their priestly guiles he is bound to feel ashamed of himself and thus fall easily into their hands, as the fruit of his repentance. Once caught the pilgrim is taken onto the water’s edge and made to repeat a prayer in an ancient dialect of which he has not a single clue as to its meaning. He becomes ashamed of pronouncing hard to articulate words, polysyllabic words with lots of tongue twisting. When he is completely defeated, he throws himself into the arms of the priest for refuge and salvation and in the meantime his fees have gone from eleven rupees to fifty one rupees and then gets soared to hundred and one rupees. The victim has no choice but to open his purse and pay the price, to escape from any further disaster

Beside the humans the town has other attractions in its attractive wild life especially in troupes of monkeys, which though of great interest to watch, are really a nuisance for the inhabitants. These are always on look out for any food to be snatched from unwary travelers and it can lead to all sorts of troubles for both combatants. Each group of the monkeys is headed and directed by a big hefty hairy creature with a Mohawk style hairstyle. He is very powerful and domineering and keeps a strict watch on all members of his group and to their activities. Compared with other creatures, the group of monkeys surpass any four footed creature for cunningness and intelligence. Imitation is the first trait among these as they watch the human race going by. It is their plan to outwit human at their games.

Their chief advantage being that they are considered to be a sacred animal among the humans and this give them an added advantage. They can go unpunished for their misbehaviours or even for occasional looting and plunder of foodstuff and other man-made articles from the stalls. The group starts its raids early in the morning, as there are rich pickings at breakfast time. Their favourite victims are women and children whom they can easily frighten with aggressive chatter, bear teeth and attacking gestures and when the victim run away via the fright, they get hold of all breakfast goodies- cereals, milk, jams and toasts. Everything is cleaned off the table in a jiffy.

  Another popular location is the local railway station as it can accommodate plenty of their kind due to enormity of its dimension and ten of its railway platforms. There are rich pickings to be made with least amount of exertion. The platforms are full of people, sitting, sleeping. reading newspapers or enjoying tea and foodstuff bought from the stalls and other hawkers. Even a little distraction or sideway glance is enough for these rascals to have their way and the poor victim is baffled to find her food disappeared instantly. She is baffled both by loss of food and the extra amount of money she has to spend for buying another lot just for appeasing her hunger.

While the train is stationary, they would run through all the cars of the long trains in search of booty. They have a sense of timing and with the slight movement of the departing train; they jump out of it in a neat formation and head for another stationary
train for another looting spree. These animals are a real nuisance but people have to put up with them in spite of their anger and frustrations. No one would dare to harm a sacred animal.

Among a monkey clan there was a smart family and smartest among them was a young lad called Hanuman who wanted to be different from the ordinary run of the animals. He took his clues by watching young human with their odd behaviour. He began to observe them and found out that the smartest among them had a kind of sway over others. They seemed to be well-educated wearing glasses and fine suits. In order to be smart, he thought, one must possess a pair of glasses and he made up his mind to acquire one. He has to select a spot where lots of tourist and smart people congregate and which was near the river in smart drinking places on waterfront. He watched the crowd and found that there were a lot of tourist with fine glasses but he was afraid to swoop on the crowd and snatch their glasses in case he gets caught.

He followed a tourist on his way to his hotel and following day early in the morning, he came to the hotel, climbed to various floors and looked through the glass windows, to spot his marked tourist. He was lucky and found the tourist on a fourth floor room doing his morning shave. He waited outside on a projection under the window and when the tourist opened the window to let in some fresh air, he rushed and jumped into his room and snatched his glasses lying on the bedside table. The tourist was in a shock, having his glasses snatched from under his very nose.

The foreign tourist was in an area of unknown dimensions. It might be that people steal from each other but whoever would of heard of a monkey stealing someone’s glasses and on that even an expensive pair of designer glasses? He had to do something about it. He went to the hotel reception and asked advice about as what action to take. He could watch smiles on the hotel’s staff and which was immensely annoying to the tourist. After suppressing their laughter, they advised the tourist to report the matter to the local police.

The tourist had taken out the traveling insurance before he started from his home and in order to claim on it, he would need a factual report of the incident in black and white. He had to go to the police to get complaint of theft registered against the monkey. There was no way out. The police station was very busy with loads of people waiting to register their complaints of assaults, thefts, fraud or other lesser crimes. After a long wait, he was interviewed by a police inspector who wrote down the complete description of the theft as dictated by the tourist. With all its serious side, it had its hilarious aspect too. The tourist had too give the complete description of the culprit, its height (both on two legs and four legs), approximate weight, any special feature or distinguishing marks on the face etc.

The inspector soon realized that Hanuman was the culprit as similar complaints were filed against him in the past and made an order to look out for the animal. There were reports from various localities of a monkey wearing an expensive pair of tinted designer glasses Soon the reports were pinpointing to a location as to its presence in a specific part of the city and police thought that now was their chance to catch him.

Animal experts were called in with their spread out nets, to dart it and capture it in the nets as it falls. Whenever they spotted it, they tried to catch it or bring it down with various means but it proved to be too clever for those devices to succeed on it. After few days a plan was hatched and animal’s sleeping quarters were pinpointed, opposite to which a hide was constructed and an expert concealed himself there and when Hanuman was spotted a dart was fired into its body. After being anestied, it was caught in a net spread out underneath. It was taken to the police station and locked into a cage at the back of the premises.

A local news reporter published the report in a column and soon it spread across the city. Animal rights people; priests from local temples and a great mob surrounded the police station and protested against the arrest of an innocent animal. People from surroundings district came with placards bearing such slogans ‘Death to the police.’ ‘Release our sacred animal’ ‘stop cruelty to innocents’ The chief inspector tried to calm people’s frayed tempers but without much success. People surrounded the police headquarters for all night vigils and there was a rumour that the mob was going to attack the building and set fire to it.

The police had to do something drastic to calm the situation and so they called a public meeting. The police wanted insurance from the mob against the further disturbance by the Hanuman monkey from snatching the tourists’ glasses but no one could give such an undertaking. A local optician cum spectacle maker offered to provide Hanuman with a new pair of designer glasses every month and hoped that will curb its tendencies to snatch other peoples’ spectacles. Everybody thought it to be best solution. Hanuman was released with a new pair of tinted glasses and was applauded enthusiastically by the gathered crowd. Peace descended on the city and everybody prayed for it to last.


Durlabh Singh© 2010.