I hate them. The word ‘hate’ might sound a bit harsh, but I can’t help it. I just plainly, blatantly, without any prejudice hate them. Why? Oh, they made my life hell. Not only mine, but there will be lots of other girls who will stand for me when I say, “I hate those monkeys”. Don’t misunderstand me, I love animals. Okay, love is a very emotionally involved word. So, I would rather say, I like animals. Even though, since my taste buds tasted their first juicy, chewy and yummy meaty food, which is continuing till this day, I have been the reason for the deaths of a lot of animals, still, I like them. Call me a hypocrite, but when was human ever logical? And in any case, what’s wrong with liking my food, and extending my liking to those that I don’t eat? Nothing, I guess. But, no matter how much I try, I am just not being able to include monkeys to my ‘likability list’. Yes, yes, there are reasons for that and it all goes back to my college days, when all these began.
Our college hostel was situated on the side of a small hill and as you have guessed by now, this small hill was the home of a troop of monkeys. Need I say more? Well, it was not just that they were a bunch of robbers, hooligans, perverts etc. etc. but also, they were creatures with no respect for us, the humans, ‘God’s greatest creation’, ‘creature amongst all the creatures’, ‘the kings and queens of all the animals’. Their disrespect was even more distinctly visible for the female of the human species. If you think I am lying, I am ready to produce signed papers of witnesses vouching for what I just said only if they have been able to come out from the traumas given to them by those evil creatures. What they used to do is a dark chapter of our lives, which one shall not dare to know. But even then, I am writing this encounter of mine with the evils amongst all the evils for those brave hearts who probably can dare to call ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’ by his name.
They were ferocious, they were wild and they ruled the hill. They did not like our presence near them and vice versa. They left no stone unturned to let us know that we are not welcomed. So, they started the war and they chose the most heinous, cruelest way to do that. They stole our stuffs. And our stuffs means precious food bought with our limited monthly allowances (if you have ever experienced hostel life, then you would know what I mean when I said precious because you know what hostel food tastes like, right?), cloths (all sorts of cloths included, you don’t need to limit your imagination). If they would have been happy with only stealing then it was one thing, but, they engaged themselves in ‘wild dancing’ with those stolen cloths as if to tell us, ‘hey babes, you know now who is the boss’. Disgusting, truly disgusting. And their sexual activities in the open were even more disgusting. In fact, if they came to know that we could actually see them, they literally seemed to be enjoying their act even more. Surely, purely disgusting. Now you might be thinking how could they steal if we were present in the rooms, or if we had to leave our rooms then why didn’t we just close the doors and windows, duh? You think we didn’t do that? Let me tell this to those who don’t have much experience of facing these torturous, wild monkeys, that they are a bunch of pretty organized, smart, highly social creatures. Duh? They somehow learnt the trick to unhook the doors, and there was no stopping them thereafter. Someone even told me that she saw a monkey opening a pressure cooker lid. Now, what can you say about that? We would return from our classes and find our rooms all messed up. Foods scattered all around, cloths missing and wait if you think that that was all, here’s something more, they peed on our beds, messed it with their dirty outputs. Yuk. And didn’t I tell you what great actors they were? If somehow we happened to find out one of the devils waiting outside the window for that perfect moment to invade when we were in our rooms, he would just look away, making an expression as if he was just there for an outing and got stuck by this ‘heavenly beauty’ inside the room. You think I am lying? Trust me; I have got quite a few years of experience in observing those devils. But what was most annoying was that they didn’t give a damn to our existence. Especially to the girls. They were not scared of us even by a tiny mini bit. If we tried to scare them away, they would show faces to us with lines like, ‘you are just girls, you are just damn girls’ hanging in their expressions. Such disrespect for the greatest creature of God was really unbearable.
They used to steal from the hostel kitchen too and the cooks were quite fed up with them. They had to clean up the mess made by those monsters all the time and so they too, along with us, cursed them all the time. It happened one day, that one young cook, losing all his patience, beat one monkey quite badly. Now, though the cooks despised those creatures, they also considered them as the descendents of Hanuman. And you know what religious beliefs means in this country. The other cooks gave the young fellow quite a scolding. And, he too probably realized what he had done. But, in any case, what was done could not be undone. Time could not be moved back.
We came to know about the incident when we saw a monkey limping around the hostel campus for many days. It was painful to see that little devil suffering, no matter how much I hated him. It was one of the lessons of my life that violence, war, these are no solution for anything, no matter how much we hate others, we have to live in this world together.
One fine evening, a worker of the hostel had to go for some inspection of the water tank when he noticed a troop of monkeys gathering around something. Actually, many of us had also been noticing this group’s unusual activities since evening. But we had no clue what was going on. That worker tried to go near the monkeys, and it wasn’t surprising for us to see his daredevil act, as those monkeys were aggressive towards us the girls more than the guys. However, that wasn’t a lucky day for the guy, as the monkeys were just not in a mood to have him anywhere near them. They scared him away. Later it was discovered that those monkeys were actually gathering around their injured friend who died that day. I was speechless to see such solidarity. I also remember something similar for crows too.
I learned many lessons in my college days. In fact most of my life’s lessons so far, have come from those wonderful days, and yes surely I learnt lots of ‘monkey lessons’ too. The monkeys were evil, monstrous, perverts, but they were a part of this world. Their young ones were cute, lovely and adorable and looking at them, the way their mothers cared about them, their mischief, all these would remind you of human babies. Observing them you can learn a lot about your own species. But still, I hate them.
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