With October softness in the air, a couple of monkeys have taken to revisiting my balcony. They enjoy tearing leaves and eating flowers, which I, naturally, don’t like at all. I have to tell myself sternly that they, too, are jiva-jantu looking for food, and that their natural habitat is steadily eroding, which is why they forage in human habitation, poor things. And it is Dussehra month, so perhaps they have been sent to test my epic commitment?
Some people seem to get along well with monkeys. I don’t think I’m in their happy number, although I love going to Vrindavan, despite the monkey menace being so strong that the only way to deal with it is to treat it as a game, a lila within the lila.
That puts you on a piquant epic footing. So I walk myopically down the kunj galis, the narrow lanes of Vrindavan, with my glasses off my nose because the monkeys there love to snatch at eye-crutches. You have to bribe them with a mango tetrapak to get them back; that’s their established rate. I’m swathed in my most voluminous dupatta to hide my flowers and offerings on the way to the temple and the prasad on the way out.
Avoid eye contact with monkeys looking to mug you, wear your bag aslant, wear chappals you can shed easily at the temple door and walk purposefully, not like a goggle-eyed hick on his first visit to the big city. These rules are funnily similar to the instructions I got on my first visit to New York in the 1990s to avoid being mugged.
So, Darwin had a point about evolution, you think, as you follow your nose to where the smell of roses grows stronger with every step. Inside the sanctum, well away from the monkeys prowling outside, you can make eye contact for as long as you like with Banke Bihariji, who lives to look at us, and whose priests ritually pull a curtain across every few minutes. They say it’s to keep him on his pedestal; otherwise, he may jump off to dance in our midst, as he did before he took the road to Mathura and plunged us into Kaliyuga when his avatar ended. This vividly brings back the Marathi abhang, ‘Namadeva kirtan kari, Premabhara naatse Panduranga’, meaning, ‘Whenever Namdev sings, Krishna lovingly dances’.
Though I’m wary of monkeys, I’m willing to believe that they have certain affinities with us. This is because of a true story from the 1920s. I heard it from the Carnatic violin duo Lalitha and Nandini about their guru Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer (1908-2003), the grand old man of Carnatic music whom Ustad Amjad Ali Khan described as a “fakir aadmi”.
Lalitha and Nandini, who played for the great Western violinist Yehudi Menuhin and passed Western classical music exams at Cambridge with honours, told me that their guru stayed in Thiruvarur, Tamil Nadu when he was a young man. This town is the birthplace of the three saintly Carnatic composers Thyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Shyama Shastri.
On the thinnai or sit-out of a little house across the street, an old lady would recite the Ramayana every morning with her eyes closed. A baby monkey would appear from nowhere, lie quietly on her lap and scamper off just before she opened her eyes.
I wonder, did Kaliyuga overlook Thiruvarur? Or is it that Hanuman is believed to be a Nityasuri, meaning one who is free of karma for eternity and lives forever in our midst to encourage and save us? As he did for a sincere believer like Captain Smit Machchhar? So many across the country seem to know the Hanuman Chalisa and value its significance as a kavach or protective shield for believers.
This notion of Hanuman’s protective presence is so cherished that you’ll find people muttering ‘Jai Bajrang Bali’ as their flight takes off (I do, too) or before they do something daring in adventure sports. The fact of the matter is that we cannot but love the ‘action hero’ personality of Hanuman, the wise and gentle giant upheld as an ideal of humility and devotion despite being a superstar in his own right.
This is expressed in the Sanskrit verse ‘Yatra yatra Raghunatha kirtanam tatra tatra krta-mastakanjalim/vashpavari paripurna lochanam Marutim namata rakshasa-antakam’. Which means, ‘Wherever the glory of Rama is sung, there, with his hands clasped over his bowed head and eyes overflowing with tears, is Hanuman; I salute Hanuman who vanquishes demons’.
This belief is so deep that wherever the Ramayana is discoursed upon, the organisers place a draped wooden board on the stage for Hanuman, who is thought to be in attendance, though no one can tell in which guise. They say he won’t actually sit there unless he’s come invisibly, but just in case he does, we shan’t be found wanting in respect and affection.
Even invisibly, Hanuman inspires us through the verse, ‘Buddhir balam yasho dhairyam nirbhayatvam arogata/ajatyam vaak patutvam cha Hanumat smaranat bhavet’, meaning, ‘By remembering Hanuman, I gain intelligence, strength, a good reputation, courage, fearlessness, good health; I avoid dullness, and become eloquent’.
But to properly appreciate the beauty of Hanuman, whose original name was Sundara, the beautiful one, we must first understand the One he reveres—Sri Rama, whom he loved the moment he saw him. What does Rama represent if not good over evil, preservation over destruction?
Renuka Naryanan | FAITHLINE | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
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