Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

13

One afternoon, about a month after their first appearance in the orchard, the monkeys found five bottles of rum while rifling through the bag of a man who had stopped to see Sampath on his way to a wedding. They drank it all up and that afternoon, when they resurfaced in Sampath’s tree, where they were accustomed to joining him for a little siesta at 3.00, they felt unable to slip into the general state of stupor that overtook the orchard like a spell particular to this time of day.

Sampath stretched out drowsily upon his string cot. He held his hands up so their shadow fell upon the illuminated trunk in front of him and he watched his fingers move, creating a lotus blossom with petals curling and uncurling, a swimming fish, a lurching camel. He was amazed at the sophistication of the shapes he made. He let his fingers wriggle like a spider to scuttle across the impromptu stage of the sun-stamped tree. These scuttling insect legs caused a shiver to course down his spine and he shook his hands as if to get rid of a spider inside him. He remembered the way he had sometimes scared himself in their home in Shahkot, flicking his tongue in and out in front of the mirror — a snake’s tongue, not his own. He thought of human beings with bird-beak noses, people with swan necks, cow eyes, bird-heart terror or a dolphin’s love for the ocean. People with sea-water tears, with bark-coloured skin, with stem waists and flower poise, with fuzzy-leaf ears and petal-soft mouths. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. The Chawla family and various visitors, including the spy and Miss Jyotsna, lay scattered throughout the orchard. But the monkeys refused to settle down.

‘Do keep quiet,’ said Sampath sleepily. ‘You are making me nervous with all your jumping.’

But, pulling faces and hooting, they leapt about the tree and carpeted the ground below with twiggy flotsam.

‘Stop this,’ said the spy, who was hit with a little twig. He was trying to think through his thoughts and put them all in order, since they had become so jumbled lately.

‘Yes, keep quiet,’ shouted several other devotees. There was something truly wrong with these monkeys.

‘They are acting very strangely,’ said Mr Chawla.

‘Perhaps it is the full moon,’ said Ammaji.

But when Mr Chawla discovered the empty rum bottles near the outhouse, it became apparent that it was not the moon at all.

‘Oh, they are only monkeys.’ Sampath felt compelled to defend them. ‘What can they possibly know? When the rest of the household is sleeping, the child puffs on his father’s hookah.’

‘It is true,’ said some, while others, embarrassed that alcohol had been discovered on the compound, just giggled. ‘It is not the monkeys’ fault. Always men are the degenerate ones. It is very sad, but in a place like, this with so many visitors, you are bound to get the bad with the good. Isn’t that so, Babaji?’

‘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.