As I plodded across the courtyard to brush my teeth, prising my gooey eyelids open, I spotted him perched over the protective overhead steel bars, like a sentinel in a castle turret. Though our household had had a slew of visitors from the animal kingdom, a red faced Rhesus monkey was a rarity. As if their names were on the family ration card, a couple of domiciled bandicoots were in residence, excavating professionally for discovery of the likes of Mohenjodaro or Harappa.
Once, a ten foot long shiny, cobra was found curled up on the water tub cover . The reptile was caught and let off. My petrified grandma immediately made a vow that she would offer milk to Nagaraja at an ant-hill next Friday.
No sooner my elder sister Savi spotted the simian specimen than she bolted like a devotee darting on live coals and hid inside the adjoining store room. “Why do you invite your pals so early in the morning?” she taunted me from behind the woodwork. Though not a primatologist, she asked, “and where is he from?”
I told her the itinerant was perhaps on his way from Kishkinda to Lanka, breaking journey en route to call on his distant relatives. She was not amused.
She bade me to drive it away forthwith for she had a morbid fear of monkeys from the time one marauder snatched a banana from her at Tirupathi with the ferocity of a rugby player.
From his position of eminence, he bared all his teeth at me and ran his hand over his head. May be he was criticising my unkempt hair which was not fair for I had just gotten up.
He then hopped up and down nine times, presumably his early morning calisthenics, throwing a broad hint that I should emulate. I refused to oblige.
“Is he there? Or gone?” Savi asked, gingerly opening the door a crack so the monkey would not sneak in somehow. He gibbered, hearing her voice, picked up an object from the tiled roof and threw it down. This done, he vanished from the scene with a hop-step and jump of Olympian standard. I blew the All Clear for her to come out. “Look, what he has air-dropped.”
She gave out a high-pitched whoop of joy. It was her missing purse in which she had kept her diamond ring. “My god! Incredible! Never thought I would find it. Such an invaluable ring! Where did he get it and how? “
I suggested may be the archaeologist bandicoot had dragged that old tattered purse to the backyard for closer study as possibly belonging to the Paleolithic age. Our simian friend who found it chose to deliver to the rightful owner. Uncanny!
Savi closed her eyes, clasping the purse rapturously between her palms. My devout grandmother, a veteran of pledges, hearing of this shook with pietistic paroxysm and made a vow she would offer a garland of 108 pepper vadas to Hanuman next Saturday.
