A Monkey's Revenge against Humans

 

If your being isn’t bugged with ambition to a specific extent, the institutions, people, society, even your own family will find you weak and inefficient for their scheme. Satti Bhai, my cousin brother, is a clear example of this. He held a governmental job but had no hunger to rise in the ranks. During his youth, he loved mountaineering but the Himalayas lost their charm as drinking became his primary love in the evenings. He is a thorough gentleman in the art of drinking. Even after the alcohol’s chauvinistic liberality running in his veins, he is always at peace with one and all. As the bottle hits the bottom, he is a replica of some inclusionist, flexible, eclectic and absorptive God.

But then something happened that spoilt the equilibrium. I saw him losing his temper for the first time. It wasn’t after drinking. It was in broad daylight when his body was free of liquor. We were standing in a narrow, crowded old Delhi bazaar lane. Electric cables above, just a few feet above one’s head, crisscrossed the narrow space like thick creepers to give the sense of a false ceiling. Satti Bhai stood with a sense of aloofness and majestic muse about the futility of all this scurrying about, probably already looking up to the evening when his already slow world would become almost stand-still in the beautiful fog created by the bottle.

Then the leisurely strolling moments were checkmated. A monkey was kingly sitting on the electric cables, its legs dangling above Satti Bhai’s head. With an unbelievable ease, it peed on his head. As the warm fluid trickled down his crown, Satti Bhai couldn’t believe the attack on his sagely dignity. He yelled revengefully, baulked a terrible cuss word and jumped to hold the monkey’s tale to swing it and thrash it around. The offending rascal easily escaped leaving Satti Bhai out of words and fuming with rage.

Later, he took bath and shampooed his hair but, as he said, the bad smell won’t go. He got a terrible headache as well, which he said was due to the horrible chemicals in the simian pee. That evening, the bottle failed to sober him down for the first time. He was snappy, moody and argumentative. That was his initiation into after-drinking usual kind of revelry. He is capable of punching his co-drinkers these days. So primarily what happens to us can mould us into countless variants.

An Ode to Early November

 

There is nostalgia and romance in the air in early November. A festive spirit is daintily festooned to most of the faces. There is love in the air. A butterfly couple flies in looping, free patterns of companionship, love, lust and procreation. It represents the air’s gallant, love-drenched, unhurried, effortless, soaring spirits.

The rose petals are velvety, soft, scented and scatter to playful winds after their short dazzle on the stage of existence. They are like a pampered princess. Marigolds, on the other hand, are hardy ones. Their lack of flashy colors and intoxicating smell is compensated by hardiness and durability. They are like hardworking, working class people. No wonder, the Gods prefer them as garlands around their necks.

A peepal that I planted has grown too long. Its thin stem looks too eager to kiss the skies. But too soaring ambitions see us plummeting down to kiss the ground as well. The lanky plant falls under the weight of its own tall aspirations. It now needs the support of a stick to regain its vertical. Helping a bent down plant to hold its head high is a nice thing to do. I only advise the plant to go up at a moderate, manageable pace.   

The Power of Faith

 

Many decades back, it was a scrub forest in the countryside surrounding my village. The distances were still measured by creaking cartwheels even though rolling tyres had made their presence felt. A sanyasi meditated in a little cave dug into an earthen mound overlooking a little pool of water in the scrub forest. As he meditated, a wolf and a cobra stayed nearby. He achieved enlightenment. Now we have the holy pond surrounded by a tiny grove of banyan, peepal and neem trees.

The place carries its mystique and solitariness, where one can still feel the aromatic wafts of the holy man’s spirituality. There is an elemental sound of faith reverberating through the gusts of breeze playing with the leaves. Silence and peace is unperturbed as the moments pass in tuneful glides with harmony. Birds have a melodious regaling among the trees. A family of green pigeons safely coos in the banyan canopy. There is a group of fourteen geese that own the pond waters and they assert their rights pretty noisily now and then.

The holy man used to bathe in the tiny pond. Faith is feisty, disarming and daring. Our own self is its mighty nurturer. The waters in the little pond heal skin allergies. Many people have been cured and the myth stays with the little mossy pool.

In the little shrine commemorating the holy man, a priest draws healing powers from the holy man’s legacy. He acts as a faith healer and his simple process of chanting mantras and blessings—drawing sustenance from the holy man’s spiritual energies—cures people of typhoid. Many people authenticate the efficacy of this faith-healing treatment. Long lasting are the effects of meditations.

The place has all that it takes for the seekers of silence and peace. The offerings at the little temple sustain birds and a few dogs on the premises. The seeds of penance leave behind a crop that serves humanity, and some animals and birds also, for a long time.

The New Bride

 

She is a new bride, pretty looking, slender and curvaceous with a biting pout on her lips. Whatever energy is left after the night revelries driven by the youthful passion, she spends it on her mother-in-law. The old woman has a loafy, gruffy, rumbling tone that booms in a dull way. It’s highly inept for fighting. The young woman, on the other hand, is incisive like a knife. Her high-pitched, sharp notes cut through the buttery, loafy resistance of her mother-in-law. Who wins is a foregone conclusion. She easily tames the old woman during the day. For the nights, her pretty face and slender figure is more than sufficient to tame the already exhausted husband who works in a needle factory in a nearby town. He is well aware of the dangers presented by small, sharp, incisive things. And thus starts another little story of lengthening another pedigree.

The Matrimonial Bamboo

 

A guy married very late, at the age of forty in fact. In the conservative village society, it’s almost like getting married while you are peeping into your grave. They would love child marriages any day. His classmate in the village school meets him after a few years. ‘I hardly meant to marry but this society, peer pressure, and family and relatives nagging my soul day and night forced me into marriage at last. I couldn’t handle it anymore. It was like they had put the end of a stick into my bum and held it to maneuver around,’ he lamented. ‘And now by agreeing to get married, you have allowed the stick to be entirely thrust inside you, so carry it smartly now,’ the friend quipped matter of factly.