B006NZAQXW EBOK (20 page)

Turning sour, his stomach revolted and fired up in a terrible state of indigestion as if it contained a roiling mass of serpents, venomous and hissing in volcanic heat.

Sampath leant over the edge of his cot and threw up. The vomit burnt him like acid, leaving his insides corroded and empty. Only the black hole of horrible anticipation he had felt for the past few weeks was left intact.

When the visitors were finally made to leave by Mr Chawla, they retreated not quiet and ashamed-looking, but shouting even louder to claim that the Baba’s indigestion was the fault of whoever was arguing against them.

Sampath remembered his early rapture in the orchard. It had been a love affair: how he had bloomed and blossomed, how his joy, his playfulness had shone upon his face. He remembered, regarding the remains of his collection, how he had spent hours stringing necklaces of seed pods about himself. How he had put flowers behind his ears, sipped their nectar. He had unzipped pods with his teeth and prised open buds to uncover parasols of pink. The longer he spent in such activities, the more engrossed he had become. He had tickled his heel with the razor edge of wild grasses, rubbed his feet against a bit of bark to be overtaken by the same unbearable ecstasy that overtakes a cat rubbing itself against a tree trunk. He had squeezed the sticky gum from shrubs, cut into stems so the sap ran like milk and painted with the whiteness upon his legs. He had tapped anthers heavy with pollen so they spilled their rich yellow cargo on to his fingers and he had dusted this richness over his eyelids …

His mind returned to the afternoon’s events.

It was into this strained atmosphere that the new District Collector was delivered when, at long last, the awaited express from Delhi arrived. As soon as he descended from the train, he found himself rushed at and surrounded by several stern-faced messengers and a secretary; they bore all sorts of plans and proposals on a subject about which, who knows how, he had not been briefed before his arrival.

‘I am sorry, sir. I tried, sir,’ said his secretary, ‘but the phone lines are out and the postal and telegraph services are being run by my old boss, sir, who will not let me enter the premises, and we did not want to alert any of the big authorities for it would be better if we can deal with the situation ourselves … Or all the blame will be on our heads, sir, and it will go down as an immediate black mark on your record … Never mind, sir, in this way you will have had a nice peaceful journey instead of being worried … Am I right?’ He beamed and garlanded the bewildered official with the garland of marigolds he had brought along, even though the flowers were rather bedraggled from having been at the station so long.

The newcomer was a quiet man and, though firm in his ideals, he was a very shy man, only just installed in government service, and very thin and weak-looking. He had been offered the town of Shahkot as his first posting precisely because it was not a very big responsibility, and so that he
might find his feet gently, for, after all, his father was an influential officer in the Indian Administrative Service. How the family had rejoiced to have a new member in the government; after a short vacation to celebrate the news, he was sent on to his posting with thirty-five pickle jars containing pickles made personally by his mother, enough to last him two entire years in service! He had hoped to go home quietly with cook and driver, unpack, explore … and now … Black mark on records? What good is too much worry?

Who do you think this secretary was, giving all this fine advice in a waterfall of words? It was Mr Gupta from post-office days! Lonely after being more or less completely deserted by Miss Jyotsna and miserable in the post office with nobody to talk to but a curt and silent man hired in Sampath’s place, he had applied for and obtained the post of secretary to the DC. At last, he felt, he was in the thick of things; more so, in fact, than at any other time in his life. His spirits rose. He would have been even happier if there had been a lady around to flirt with, of course, and he had been disappointed to learn the District Collector was a bachelor, but this job, he thought, might put him back in touch with Miss Jyotsna …

‘I will escort you to your new home, sir. I myself gave orders for dinner. The cook is left over from the Raj, sir, and wanted to make you cutlets with caramel custard. I said: “Nothing doing. What did we get rid of the British for? To continue eating cutlets and custard?” You will have to be very strict with him. He got into a very bad mood, but I gave him orders for vegetable pulao and mutton curry. That is why he refused to come to the station. I am sure he is still sitting on his stool sulking … Oh, and after you have eaten, sir, we had better visit the Monkey Baba. It must be done, sir, or it will look bad. It is expected.’

In the meantime, swaying and jumping in the government jeep, the DC was trying hard to read the missives that had been delivered to him. He could not understand what was going on at all … and how his secretary could talk! He could not think, what with all the talking that man was doing. There, only a few days ago he had been on a blissful family vacation in Mussoorie and now here he was immersed in the worst governmental tragedy he could have dreamt of.

‘These monkeys are a terrible business, sir,’ said Mr Gupta, pretending hard to be unhappy, but looking, despite it all, very happy indeed.

The first meeting held with the Brigadier following the District Collector’s arrival was stormed by the Monkey Protection Society. Terrified, the DC looked out of the window at the crowd of gargantuan proportions that seemed only to grow each time he turned his head to look again.

The evening before he had been taken to see Sampath in the guava orchard. Of course, he too had been accompanied by what Mr Gupta had referred to as ‘rabble – rousers’. Shyly, for a moment, he had looked at Sampath and Sampath had looked at him. In a curious way, each of them had felt exposed and vulnerable to the other. Neither said a word as everybody else began, yet again, to have their say. Then Sampath had turned on his cot so he faced into the leaves and had refused to turn around again, so afraid was he of going through the same trauma that had caused him to be sick a few days ago. The DC felt a strong sympathy for the Baba and returned home even more distressed about the matter than before.

And now who knew what would happen at this meeting …

‘Don’t worry, sir,’ whispered Mr Gupta, who had arrived for the meeting so early he was even in time to help the official heat his bath water with a makeshift immersion heater made of an electric coil about a wooden stick. ‘I am here to give tip-top advice,’ Mr Gupta whispered to him, smiling
comfortingly. He liked his new boss much more than mean Mr D. P. S. from the post office.

The Brigadier seated himself across from the DC and Mr Gupta. He had been looking forward to presenting his clever plan to them. But no sooner had he opened his mouth than the crowd began to shout very loudly through the window. How was he supposed to talk with all these village bumpkins gathered around?

‘What kind of military do we have in the country?’ said angry voices. ‘It is full of idiots. Firing guns every hour! We will not allow it. No guns in a holy place, no guns in a holy place, no guns in a holy place …’

‘Do you even …’ the Brigadier stuttered in response. ‘Illiterate donkeys!’

‘We will not stand for it,’ interrupted a stern woman from the Monkey Protection Society and poked her thin head right into the room. ‘No, we will not. We will absolutely, under no circumstances, stand for it.’

‘Really, sir,’ whispered Mr Gupta into the ear of the DC, ‘it is a silly plan, sir. “Disperse men throughout the brush,” he says here in his plan. But what brush, sir? Hundreds of people going up and down … it is more like a fairground than a brush. The bullets will be bound to hit somebody or other.’

‘What, then, do you propose we do?’ The Brigadier lost his temper at them all and leapt to his feet. ‘Why don’t you think of something yourselves? Why don’t you come up with an alternative plan, heh?’

‘We should investigate peaceful options,’ said a voice.

‘Like what?’ asked the Brigadier coldly and waited.

A silence fell upon the crowd.

‘Negotiation,’ said the Monkey Protection lady after a while.

‘Oh hoh!’ said the Brigadier with scorn and triumph. ‘You try negotiating with a monkey, aunty.’ And the seriousness of the protest was somewhat undermined as this picture of the stern Monkey Protection lady negotiating with the monkeys struck several people as being funny and they began, despite their fervent objection to his plan, to giggle rather inappropriately.

The DC looked at them amazed. How could they laugh? Just after they’d been shouting such angry threats …

Certainly, he reflected, he had come to a very unusual place. But this plan was inadmissible. His supervisor would be sure to hear of it and then, if there were any casualties … He must be firm about putting his foot down. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ he said to the Brigadier, ‘this does not appear to be the most prudent of possibilities …’

Later in the morning they met with the CMO, who was accompanied by a crowd of angry businessmen and shopkeepers who had spent all night chanting slogans outside his bungalow. Gasping and pale, he dashed from the car to the DC’s office under the guard of the police superintendent, who had been forced into duty yet again.

‘We have received protests from all the shopkeepers, sir,’ said Mr Gupta, giving the DC a quick briefing. ‘They refuse to have their liquor licences revoked, and also we have received threats from all the surrounding towns saying if we revoke the licences, the monkeys will simply shift their focus and carry on being a nuisance in their vicinity. And they are right, sir, these monkeys might even teach their tricks to the local monkey populations in other towns if they are thrown out of this one. And then we will have a whole state of drunken monkeys. You yourself are familiar with the adage “One bad apple spoils the others.” In this
case we might say, “One bad monkey spoils the others.”’

‘But, sir,’ shouted someone in the listening crowd, inspired by Mr Gupta’s little witticism, ‘can you really teach an old monkey new tricks?’

‘Arreji,’ said someone else, ‘we will have enough problems with the young monkeys, whether the old ones are learning anything or not.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Gupta, ‘this would be a case of “Stick your head out in wartime and be hit on the head.’” He was enjoying showing off some of the lines he had learned from the Monkey Baba, especially since he had spotted Miss Jyotsna’s admiring face in the midst of the crowd. In fact, he was amazed at how he could say these things and somehow, without him having to think, they meant exactly what he meant. He imagined being alone with Miss Jyotsna on a moonlit night. ‘To make cream, you must churn the milk.’

Despite himself, the DC had begun to giggle. He felt surprisingly free. ‘I do not know,’ he said to the CMO, ‘if this revoking of liquor licences would be the best idea …

The CMO was dismayed at how his plan was being greeted. ‘Since this is the response I have been given,’ he said in a dignified and injured tone, ‘I might as well go home. I have another meeting to attend.’

‘Is this the meeting with Vermaji, the scientist?’ asked Mr Gupta with interest, and on hearing that it was, he turned to his boss. ‘We had better join in, sir. He too has a proposal, if you recall, to get rid of the monkeys. If the CMO passes it, it will be presented to you.’ He was loath to give up the fun and allow it to carry on somewhere else without him.

And so the three of them and their entourage of protesters travelled to the office of the Chief Medical Officer. On the way, the crowds gathered up their strength, even though they had been standing for quite a while now, and began to
noisily shout their slogans. ‘Dab your mouth with honey and you will get plenty of flies,’ they shouted. ‘Sweep before your own door. Your answers are beside the question. Many a pickle makes a mickle. Every bean has its black. Gather thistles and expect pickles? Show a clean set of teeth.’

‘Do you hear them?’ asked the DC, puzzled, his thoughts side-tracked. ‘Many a pickle makes a mickle … what is a mickle? Guptaji, this town is full of adages I have never heard before.’

‘When the buffaloes fight, the crops suffer,’ the crowd continued. ‘It is a hard winter when dogs eat dogs. Every cock fights best on his own dunghill. Puff not against the wind. Talk of chalk and hear about cheese!’

‘Talk of chalk … and hear about cheese? Very odd. Where does this cheese come from?’ The DC found himself most interested. He wished he could have stopped to ask them the meaning of all they were saying. ‘Hear about cheese …’

While awaiting their arrival, Vermaji was sampling the tumbler of onion juice he had found sitting on the office desk in front of him, thinking, at first glance, that it was lemon squash. He took a gulp and immediately ran to the window to spit it out. He emptied the rest of the tumbler into the dry flowerbed.

‘Terrible juice,’ he said, making a face at the CMO when he entered. ‘Why don’t you drink orange instead?’ he asked. ‘Or pineapple?’

The temple people hammered on the door.

What a rude man, thought the officer, looking at the empty glass. First he had drunk all his onion juice and then, after that, he had had the audacity to criticize it. Why had
he drunk it in the first place? Immediately he decided he was not going to approve Verma’s plan. It was an absurd plan and why should he pass it when his own had been dismissed so readily? Nobody was considerate of him and he would not be considerate of Verma.

‘Absolutely not,’ he said.

‘Why, what is wrong with pineapple juice? It’s very nice juice,’ said Verma, perplexed.

‘I mean your plan,’ shouted the CMO angrily. (Oh, and now he would get another stress-induced ulcer, he thought, in an immediate terrified aside.)

‘But it is the one simple plan,’ Verma pleaded, ‘the one logical and scientific approach to what is after all a scientific problem of langur and human interaction, of alcohol addiction in monkeys – why can’t it be approved?’