As the weekend neared, I felt spent and worn: onerous work and submitting to deadlines have made me spiritless, till Ravi suggested I take a break; ‘you need it’, he proclaims as Lakshmi nods. So I find myself here, tucked in mist and mountain enveloped in silence. Coming to think of it, it is quite invigorating, this bracing chill air. All along the meandering way up and over the 120 kilometers to here I had pulled over, stopped to admire and soak in the scenic beauty and spectacle of nature, taking photos and making spot sketches. Nothing earth-shaking though, just ordinary sights, distinctly rural. A proud roster, tied to a peg in a country-side courtyard. Specially bred for specific purpose, this descendent of the original Indian Red Jungle-fowl (the progenitor of all domestic fowl chicken the world over today).
The fiery specimen, blowing ire and breathing fire has been trained to fight: yes, with its fellow fowl. A rural India sport, quite common in this part of India much purse and prestige is staked over these gory battles to death. The handsome pheasant's comb and wattle are cropped off and he is made into a mean machine. To make the struggle for supremacy bloodier, ‘made to order’ small sharp small steel knives are tied firm to the leg of the fighter and with practiced ease the victor slices open the abdomen of his challenger…a round of cheers, and a few wads of currency notes extricated form the waist fold of a soiled lungi and a supper of chicken curry. That’s the final fate of this historical heritage of India.
Crossing the tarmac road, unconcerned of the traffic is a outsized deadly black Asian Forest scorpion (H. spinifer). The forest, specimen packs a mean punch. His sting and venom is enough to kill a small animal or reduce an adult human to tears. Revered in some cultures, the scorpion has its name scribed in the heavens too – the constellation Scorpio.
I slept well, although the temperature continued plummeting to uncomfortable lows during the night. Daybreak and bright sunshine suffuse the place. I stand by my bedroom window gazing through the misty morning’s light. I am particularly looking for my ‘friends’, the bonnet macaques: the troop of rhesus monkeys that usually are up and about creating bedlam and chaos, scampering over tile rooftops, scaring dogs and kids, searching for left-over morsels or benevolent handouts. If neither, the simians have another ace up their sleeve – they will raid kitchens, brazenly dipping into pots and pans –at times even spiriting ready a made pile of idlis or dosas. As if on cue, the troop comes bounding: the rogues have a fancy for my neighbour, an elderly couple, who often but vainly try to keep the marauding monkeys at bay. The old man bursts crackers: Pooh! That’s what the troop leader says, nonchalantly upturning a tile or two in his attempt to enter the kitchen from above.
But today, they appear a bit listless, for though they came chattering and chuckling, once atop the neighbour’s roof, the troop sat in a row, silent and tense. Then, as if on a grunt signal from the boss, the entire troop of eight leaves, silently filing along the edge till they are back, chattering and scampering letting hell loose on the very next tiled house.
‘Ravi’, I summon my Man Friday, ‘is there something wrong here? Why are the monkeys behaving so oddly?’
He stood beside me as the last of the tails disappeared from our view and ken. ‘Oh, I forget to tell you. The old man next door, yes, the one who used to burst crackers to scare the scamps, passed away the day before yesterday’. His sons have come from all over and the religious rites and homage to the departed soul is being held on the third of next month’
A calf in the house shed, all curled up, legs and tail tucked under its fragile frame seeing me stare through my window, gets edgy and fidgets and gets up on gangly feet up alarm. Its mother tied to a post nearby, stares long at me, then wriggles its ears in reassuring the newborn there’s nothing to worry.
Strange, just a few weeks ago I had written a blog* on this old pair, battling every day to salvage and save what little the monkeys spare them for their own supper. Today, the drama will not be enacted. Even the monkeys seem to know about the change that the finality of death brings. Their respectful tip-toeing over the tiles was in a way, their homage. Suddenly I felt sorry I had declared war on them for messing with the helpless, I had catapulted one or two in my rage. At times like this, when the bonds of empathy and emotion appear to bridge evolutionary chasms and distances, I am convinced that man and monkeys are indeed kin.
Tales from rural India (4)
