January

 

It’s the fifteenth of January. After many gloomy, foggy days, the sun is seen rising over the horizon right from the start of a bright day. It’s a very clear day and a cheerful one. After a frosty night, the sunny warmth feels like melting an ice-slab of frozen life. One can feel its balminess even in the early morning. As the bright rays kiss our fate, the frozen and stuck life gets back to a warm flow. A blissful thawing it feels!

The monkeys have stayed subdued of late. A group of them sunbathes on a line of stone slabs projecting from the top of a wall, directly facing the sun. The morning sun beats beatifically on the wall and the slabs. They allow the warmth to percolate deep into their bones. A more ingenious type is offering its pink bum to the source of the ultimate warmth on the earth and soaks the life-giving heat through its frozen, pink rear. The rest are lying flat on the warming slabs. Forgetting their mischievous ways, they seem very calm and composed. One advantage of having frozen monkeys in the locality is that you are lucky to see your guavas ripening to finally assuage your taste buds. But as the sunbathing rejuvenates the frozen simian bones, it tickles their nerves of mischief and here they present their usual selves after an hour of sunbathing. They raid the small guava tree in our courtyard, jolt it, pluck away the ripe ones and throw away many unripe ones. A few branches are broken, leaves drizzle.

A flock of dozens of asian pied starlings arrives with their clattering, boisterous, diversified chit-chat. These are very chatty birds. They raise a pleasant ruckus as if complaining against the simian profligacy. Or maybe they are laughing or even appreciating the act. And why shouldn’t they do the latter? The way we have cornered each and everything on the earth, it entitles them to have a bit of fun at our cost.