by Kiran Desai
‘First a chikoo is raw,’ said Sampath, ‘then, if you do not pick and eat it quickly, it will soon rot and turn to alcohol.’
What was he saying? That the time of perfection passes, that you should eat a chikoo at the right time only, that everything is part of nature, that good becomes bad or that bad is not really bad because it is all part of the nature of a chikoo? Oh, sometimes he was hard to understand.
One thing, however, became clearer by the day: the monkeys had developed an unquenchable taste for liquor. Bam! How they loved it! In an immediate and explosive way that must surely have been made inevitable by the forces of destiny. Who knew if the scientific community has determined the addictive properties of alcohol on the langur or not? The truth was plain to see. They loved it in a crazy, passionate way; they began to forage with a new recklessness that made people wonder if they had not gone a little mad. Peanuts and bananas didn’t mean a thing to them now.
A few days after their first encounter with alcohol, they discovered a case of beer in a delivery van.
A week later, a bottle of whisky in a rickshaw.
Then more beer.
Then more rum.
Dark faces full of determination, wild, liquid eyes, they ran with great leaping strides to meet each bus that arrived, each scooter rickshaw that drove up, searching for liquor of any sort, inspired, no doubt, by the memory of a certain race to the blood, a mysterious lift to the spirits. They grew bolder and bolder, rifling through the contents of bedrolls, grabbing hold of shopping bags and chasing away the owners, who ran off screaming in horror. It was as if all their old bazaar habits were resurfacing; as if, bored by plenty, they were doing their best to re-create the excitement of their former life of thievery and assault in the midst of public outcry.
When they were chased from their shameless attempt at plunder, they bared their teeth, so the travellers retreated for fear of being bitten. When the pilgrims shook their fists at them, they shook their fists back and jeered loudly. As soon as they were clapped and shooed from one place, they appeared doing something worse in another. It was like warfare. They mimicked the pilgrims and lined up along with them by Sampath’s tree, smacking each other with glee as they waited for his blessing.
It soon became clear that the display of affection between Sampath and the monkeys would not extend to include everybody within its charmed circle; that their simian charms, so dear to him, would not endear them to anybody else. Peanut-laden film-lovers might be making their way to the cinema unmolested, but evidently the monkey problem had merely shifted focus.
Concern permeated the devotees’ happiness. Almost overnight, it seemed, they had a new problem on their hands.
‘If they were a nuisance before, it was more in the way children are naughty,’ said Miss Jyotsna sadly to the others as she watched the monkeys raid her bag of mail, scattering the letters in a frenzy of disappointment when they discovered no bottles in her possession.
‘Yes,’ agreed one gentleman. ‘In fact, they were endearing in their very naughtiness,’ and though he had gone too far, everyone sympathized, for generally speaking there was some truth to what he said.
14
One afternoon, a little while after the frequency of these unfortunate events had accelerated, Mr Chawla stood thinking under Sampath’s tree. The monkeys were getting more and more out of hand and he had an unsettling feeling that their hallowed days in the orchard might be under serious risk of disruption.
But the family bank account in the State Bank of India was growing by leaps and bounds and he was eager to buy shares in the VIP Hosiery Products company; they could do without a disturbance to upset this nice little venture he had set to sail. He looked to the right and left, surveyed their domain with its paths and a little arrow pointing in Sampath’s direction, with its advertisements that hung colourfully on the neighbouring trees: Dr Sood’s Dental Centre, Gentleman Tailors – ‘God made Man, we make Gentleman’ – for Campa Cola, Limca, Fanta and Goldspot, Ayurvedic Talcum Powder and Odomos Mosquito Repellent. All paid for by lavish donations, boxes of nuts and more sweetmeats, yellow, green, pink and white, than anybody knew what to do with. If it was not for Mr Chawla none of this would exist. None of it.
‘Sampath,’ said his father, ‘perhaps it is time to build you a proper hermitage. The problem of the monkeys is getting out of hand. If you lived inside a concrete structure, we could keep them out and control things. Anyway, we can’t have you sitting in a tree for ever. What will happen when the monsoon comes? There are only a few months left now.’ He envisioned a whole complex with a temple and dormitory accommodation for travellers designed to suit modern tastes in comfort, a complex that would be a prize pilgrimage stop and an environment he could keep control of.
Sampath looked at his father. Could he be hearing correctly?
Seeing Sampath’s face, Mr Chawla was filled with irritation. What a ridiculous look of overdone incredulity! ‘And you had better start learning some philosophy and religion,’ he said. ‘People will soon get tired if you cannot converse on a deeper level. I will buy you a copy of the Vedas. You really cannot sit saying silly things for ever.’
The monkeys threw apples at Mr Chawla’s head for fun, though it looked as if they were attempting to protect Sampath. He gestured angrily at them, but they greeted his protest with a barrage of bananas. Mr Chawla lost his temper.
‘They are making a mockery of us,’ he said, his sense of dignity hurt. ‘It is getting too much. People will think you are a circus act. Sitting in the tree with drunken monkeys! We must put you in a proper building immediately.’
‘I am not going to live anywhere but in this tree,’ said Sampath. ‘And the monkeys are not drunk right now. They are only playing.’
When his father had gone he realized his heart was thumping. He could not get the horrible thought out of his mind. Leave his tree? Never. Never ever, he thought, his body trembling with indignation. Fiercely, he studied the branch in front of him. He and his father were as different as black from white, as chickens from potatoes, as peas from buckets. What did he think? Did he think he would just climb down and return to his old existence like some old fool? He had left Shahkot in order to be alone. And what had they all done? They had followed him.
He spotted a beetle crawling out of an aberration in the bark right beneath his very nose. Covered in brilliant green armour, antlers sprouting from its head, wisps of wings like transparent petticoats peeping ridiculously from beneath its hard-shelled exterior; it seemed a visual proof of the silliness of his father’s proposition. Gradually, he calmed down. How beautiful these insects around him were, how incredibly beautiful: huge, generous flowery butterflies, bees with tongues that he could see hanging thin and long from their mouths, finely powdered beetles with kohl-rimmed eyes and clown-faced caterpillars with round noses, false beards and foolish feet; creatures made from leaves and sepals, petals and pollen dust. He watched an endless parade of them, wriggling, hopping, flying by, emerging as if from the bubbling pots of a magician, with the flicker and jewelled shine of … of what? Of the essence of wind and grass? Of sunlight and water?
When his mother brought his dinner to load on to the pulley system, Sampath peered down at her. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘they are planning to build a hermitage, but I will not leave this tree.’
Kulfi looked up at him. Of course he could not leave. ‘We could always poison them, you know,’ she said, trying to comfort him.
And he smiled, despite himself, to think of the time he had been rushed, vomiting and blue, into the emergency room at the Government Medical Institute after eating a meal she had cooked. Joyfully, he had missed a whole week of school. Looking at her he felt a pang of tenderness. His mother, the monkeys and himself, he thought, they were a band together.
‘You had better change your ways,’ he warned the monkeys. ‘There will be trouble for all of us if you don’t behave better.’
But the monkeys did not behave better. In fact,
they behaved a good deal worse.
About a month after their first encounter with alcohol, apparently disgusted by their meagre success in the orchard, the langurs made a trip to the bazaar, where they overpowered the old woman who sold illicit liquor from a cart. They devoured her entire supply and, drunk as could be, drunker than ever before, they returned to the Chawla compound.
‘Keep away,’ Sampath shouted at them when he saw them approaching. ‘Keep away until you’re sober.’
He knew there would be trouble. But they did not heed his warning. Exuding the rough, raw scent of local brew, they arrived like hooligans and, in true hooligan style, proceeded to turn everything they could upside-down.
Sampath had seen drunks every now and then, of course, but only once had he had a direct experience with one, when he had found himself in conversation with the neighbourhood drunkard outside the tea stall. Tottering about, crashing into the tables, the drunk had embraced Sampath, who was the only person there. ‘Say you are my best friend,’ he had pleaded, clutching hold of Sampath. ‘Are you my best friend?’
Sampath had been scared to death. ‘Yes,’ he had said.
And the man had embraced him. ‘Everything I have is yours.’
But I want nothing that is yours, Sampath had silently pleaded. The man had smelt of a sewer filth that had turned Sampath’s stomach. His eyes had been red, his breath powerful and he had held Sampath as if he would never ever let him go. Finally the man was chased away by the tea-stall owner, who came outside to pelt him with stones. Sampath had cycled far away and stood in middle of a field to recover. Still as the plants about him, gulping in the quiet and greenery.
Oh, but the monkeys were different, he thought, despite himself, as he watched them raid his mother’s kitchen, overturning pots and pans, sending buckets rolling through the orchard, the discordant clatter of metal filling the air. They were so beautiful, so full of graceful strength. Tails held high above their heads, they knocked over the milk can so the milk disappeared into the grass. They tore open the sacks of supplies that were piled under the porch, and the rice and lentils spilled into rivers of gold and green, black and white. They ate quantities of raisins and nuts, almonds, cashews and tiny, precious pine kernels whose theft caused Kulfi to chase after them with her broom. But they avoided her easily, as they did all the intrepid devotees who had formed a whole pebble-slinging army under Ammaji’s jurisdiction – bravely, they sent their stone artillery flying from slingshots, running back and forth through the trees, feeling rather drunk themselves on the excitement of it all.
‘Don’t touch the monkeys,’ Mr Chawla yelled, waving his arms, trying to snatch slingshots from the hands of the devotees. ‘They are dangerous. In this state, they will turn on you.’ But at present even he was unsure of exactly what to do. He should have taken precautions. He should have nipped the problem in the bud. But how?
When they had become bored of the kitchen, they tore newspapers to shreds; they stole Ammaji’s comb and lodged it high in a branch, they broke the spokes of Sampath’s umbrella and left it battered and full of holes. They pulled the washing from the lantana bushes where it was laid to dry. As Pinky shook a leafy branch – ‘You badmashes. Go back to the jungle where you belong’ – they loped about in circles, half draped in garments, dragging saris and sheets and petticoats behind them, tearing the fabric to shreds, strewing her finery like paint over the tree tops.
By now, the greater number of devotees had relinquished their slingshots and retreated down the hillside, frightened by the langurs’ growing violence, worried that they would be chased and robbed and perhaps even bitten.
Sampath’s tree thrashed in a fierce chaos of branches and leaves. In it, he was tossed here and there, and upside-down. What was happening? It was all too quick for him to take in. His heart leaping and falling, skipping and jumping, his mind in a whirl, he was sure if he let go he would be sent careening through the air to land, concussed, upon the ground. Before his eyes a sickening blur moved and shook.
‘Come down, Sampath,’ everyone shouted, but he held tightly on to his cot.
‘If you are not going to come down, keep absolutely still,’ his father yelled. ‘Do not move.’
Caught up in this drunken dance, savage faces, long tails, saris draped in purple and yellow streamers all about him, useless bits of thought flew past Sampath, everything going by too fast for him to stop and grab at them. He could jump; but no, it would be his undoing. He could pull on the monkeys’ tails; no, he would shout. No, he had better hold tight …
Luckily, before anybody was actually bitten or hurt, the monkeys bounded off into the university research forest, tired of the noise people were making, or perhaps tired of the orchard, their wild spirits carrying them farther and farther to the opposite hill, where the family could see them continuing their onslaught upon the meek landscape, wrecking every tree, uprooting every bush, expending their energy on anything that came in their way, leaving entire areas of the forest ravaged as if by a tornado.
Before dawn the next day, Mr Chawla was up and dressed, making his way into town as fast as he was able. Worry knit his brow. Things had gone too far. After all, diseases like rabies were carried by these animals. Something would have to be done. The old District Collector had just left and the new one had not yet arrived. There was no top authority for him to visit, but he decided to see all the other officials he could think of to make it clear that it was their responsibility to do something about this disruption to sanctity and peace in Shahkot.
15
It was about six in the morning and already the Shahkot newspaper man was delivering the story all over town. It arrived with a thwack upon verandas and porches, against doors and through windows.
Soon, the newspaper man bicycled by the house of the Chief Medical Officer, who sat in a wicker chair on his veranda in happy anticipation of the paper and the cup of tea he had just poured out to steam gently and fragrantly before him. Now, this newspaper deliverer was somebody who prided himself on his perfect aim and, seeing the CMO sitting quietly there on the veranda, he attempted to deliver the paper right at his feet. It arrived like a missile, zipping through the air and landing with a crash into the tea tray.
‘Really, you are too zealous,’ shouted the CMO after the figure bicycling quickly away, and he settled down sadly to the day’s news without his usual comforting cup of Darjeeling. ‘Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama,’ he muttered as he read of the monkeys’ exploits and he rubbed his feet together to encourage himself in the face of such bothersome news. ‘Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama.’ He mulled things over. This would be trouble. He knew it. It always meant trouble. It was precisely this sort of thing that caused his ulcers to get worse.
He lived in a constant state of panic that his ulcers would get worse, and everybody knew that nothing was worse for ulcers than worry and this worried him all the more. He moaned and rubbed his feet. He would have to go on a strict herbal diet right away. Fenugreek sprouts and onion juice. Onion juice and more onion juice. Oh, he wouldn’t be able to bear all the onion juice he’d have to drink.
He had not even given the matter at hand a proper thought, or decided on an appropriate response to this ruckus, when he heard the sound of Mr Chawla arriving in the cycle rickshaw he had taken all the way down the hillside. The residence of the Chief Medical Officer happened to be first on the road between the orchard and Shahkot. The CMO looked up surprised as the rickshaw, having gathered the momentum of a slight slope to the north of the bungalow, swept in front of his veranda with a loud squealing of brakes.
Mr Chawla leapt from his seat on to the gravel patch in front of the veranda steps and ran up them to stand threateningly in front of the official, disregarding the muddy footprints he left on the polished, red-painted floor.
Without stopping for any pleasantries, he began to shout. ‘Have you heard the news?’ he almost screamed in his high state of excitement. ‘The monkeys are threatening my son. They are threatening the
ladies of the community and disturbing the peace. They are destroying the religious atmosphere of the whole compound. We must have them removed without delay.’
The Chief Medical Officer was taken aback by this vehemence. What was he to say? He had been unfairly caught at home in his pyjama kurta. This was disastrous for a person with a sensitive nature like his. First the newspaper man and now this crazy fellow. He looked desperately at the patches of butter-yellow sun upon the lawn still mostly composed of shadow. It was ridiculous for him to be the CMO when he himself was sick.
‘My respected friend,’ he said finally, thinking of the trouble that could come about if things were not left well alone, ‘you must remember that ever since the monkeys’ association with our beloved god Rama, these animals are hallowed with special affection in our sacred tradition. They have their own devoted supporters.’ He looked around again. ‘Myself included,’ he said as firmly as he could, hoping Mr Chawla would leave so he could return his mind to the subject of his stomach and give orders to his servant for onion juice to be prepared. But when Mr Chawla opened his mouth to start talking again, he lifted up the telephone receiver. ‘I will call the head of the biology department at the Lady Chatterjee University. As you perhaps know, Vermaji is an expert in human-langur interaction and maybe he will have some peaceful ideas on how to defuse this situation. Of course,’ he said after dialling the number, ‘the line is busy as usual, or else it is not working.’ And he tried again.
‘Isn’t he the same person,’ said Mr Chawla, ‘who set baits filled with sleeping pills to contain the problem at Ranchi? They did not catch even a single monkey. These animals are very street-smart. They have learned all sorts of tricks in the bazaar.’
The man they were trying to reach was at that moment studying the morning papers with great interest. Monkeys cause menace in holy man’s retreat. Last night drunken monkeys went on a wild rampage, causing people to flee the scene, he read with unnatural delight. ‘No doubt this is not the last we shall hear of this,’ he said to his wife, seated across the table from him. ‘You know,’ he went on jubilantly, ‘perhaps I will have a chance to try out my new hypothesis. If the leader of the group is killed and hung in full view of the other monkeys, they might disband and disappear into the forest … Of course, they might also just elect another head monkey …’