Kamal Ghorui
So, we had a simian visitor… almost an impish one at that. First, he made us aware of his existence by his intense curiosity bordering on destructiveness. There was a plant outside our front door with the flower in bloom, but it was still in a black plastic bag that it had been bought in, awaiting transplantation into a gamla… but, sheer laziness, for I’m my own gardener, made me delay it.
I found the mangled remains of one stem with the mitti turned inside out. The monkey was either an environmentalist who took affront to that black plastic bag and was egging me on like my sleeping conscience to get on with the job. Or perhaps, he liked the flower too much and wanted it for himself. I don’t know but quickly I brought in the half-wilting plant and transplanted it into a gamla, giving it a proper place after its silent battle with the monkey. It survived and I whooped in delight for it.
On another visit, the consecutive day, the monkey affronted by its disappearance turned detective. He cleverly opened our front door that we were dumb enough to leave unlatched. My husband, who pretends not to hear anything that I say got alerted by the soft khat, khat, and quickly rushed to the lobby. I can only guess that they were both equally surprised to see each other and sized each other up. I’m happy to say the monkey caved in first and left quickly the way he had come. So, I’m not the only one. Anyways, we have now become rather disciplined in promptly locking the front door after guests or help leave.
Perhaps, peeved at that hasty exit, the monkey next vengefully went for the Diwali lights hanging outside our front door. Sadly, yes, I had yet to bring them down… lack of time or lack of priority or thoughts of recycling them on to the next year. Anyways, these were the small multicoloured variety and I can only imagine him plucking them off the wire and playing with them like ping-pong balls the way I saw them scattered all over the floor. Hastily, I called for the electrician and got the wire disconnected and the remnants of those lights taken off.
On another occasion, he opened the drawers of an old storage unit outside the house. The thoroughness of his inspection took me back to my warden way back in college. She had this way of keeping ‘beautiful room’ contests to encourage us to clean out our rooms. But who would fold the piles of clothes and my roommate and me in that first contest hastily stuffed the entire lot into the cupboard. Well, the warden was the warden, and she went straight for the cupboard where much to our mortification, the mountain of clothes tumbled out the minute she opened the doors. Seeing the storage unit left open, its contents spilling out, my mind instantly flashed back to this incident decades ago.
To top it all, there was rubbish stored there, the kind that one often forgets to discard. The monkey made his opinion of my housekeeping skills abundantly clear by leaving behind a pool of liquid and some warm poo. Really! I cleared all the rubbish and went off to complain, only to be told by one and all, “Shanivar ko Hanumanji aaye, ashirwad de gaye.” Well, his blessings certainly domesticated me!
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