The unusual hygiene of lonely primates

I moved to Bombay on a rainy day, whenever I try to give my life a fresh start, all my vigor is often damped and drained, this time the expression turned quite literal. I remember getting irritated by the splashes of mud on my jeans, by the end of my walk to the auto I had painted a Pollock on my rear, what a great start my friend I said to myself. Although I reached in the morning, the weather outside was dark and gloomy; the air was heavy and the dust stuck to my face like cheap glue; I kept sweating profusely, my only relief was those little gushes of wind when the auto sped up. The petrichor mixed with the stench of open sewers and the constant commotion on the road numbed me down. Overwhelmed by my senses and silenced by the noise of a new city I felt like a pariah. But humans are the most adept of all animals; on the inside, we might be dying of emotional trauma and existential dread but on the surface, we blend like sugar in water. In my first few days, I understood the clichés of Bombay, the dizzying crowds, the acrid smell of sweat in the trains, the wind of the night sea, and the glowing nightscape of Marine drive. They say Bombay is the city of dreams yet it never sleeps; and here I was without any dreams, without any plans, here just by pure chance. The interviewer had asked me if I was comfortable moving to Bombay, I answered with a nonchalant ‘No issues, sir’, not that I wanted to say no, I was indifferent to the outcome of the interview, indifferent to the idea of moving to Bombay. Saying yes is the path of least resistance, and is often favorable to both parties. I did not know anybody in Bombay; I had made peace with the idea of living a lonely life. My distant colleagues and the dizzying speed of life made way for the perfect start.

The company gave me a cheap hotel on the outskirts of Bombay; it was pretty far out from the office, I am sure they had their reasons; I did not bother to find out. I used to take the local train to work; soon I was part of the constant flux that flowed through the city but just like sugar, after a few swirls of the spoon I couldn’t tell myself from the crowd. But every day before taking the train back to the hotel, I would stop at the cross over bridge at the station, find myself a position from where I could get a panoramic view, and watch the evening crowd rush to the platforms. They would jostle each other; a few fits of abuse will be thrown here and there along with physical shoves. Like sheep that run but fall in line when they hear the crack of the whip from the shepherd, people scramble at the sound of the railway announcer who dispassionately reads from the same template again and again, I wonder if she had a window view to this show. The most interesting show was put on at 5 pm, with some Vivaldi or Schubert in my headphones; I would detach myself from the sheep. I would tell myself how they are like the proverbial hamster always running on the treadmill. These little moments made me feel like a rebel; I gave a silent laugh to the sheep, this feeling of rebellion was my salvation and also my vanity

The hotel arrangement was temporary and I had to find to a new place and I needed to do it quickly as I had languished around since my arrival, and to add to that I took an early leave from work every day on the pretext of finding a flat; only to find myself staring at the ceiling fan in the hotel listening to harmonica concertos. The hotel receptionist one morning amidst all his small talk gave a broker’s number, all his sweetness was after all not without reason after all. The broker showed up on a Sunday morning at 7 am, he had bathed and had smoothly matted hair for which he might have used copious amounts of coconut oil. He smelled like a temple, and when I got on his bike to go the supposed flat he put on a list of bhajans on his phone and then kept it in his pocket before we drove off. I wonder about the futility of this deed, the song was lost in the buzz of the engine but in matters of religion and clandestine rituals, logic has little space. Or maybe it was one of those little games he plays inside his head like how I step only on the white stripes when walking on a zebra crossing; illogical, senseless yet life-affirming. The way to Aarey colony was rather relaxing, the bike zoomed through green canopies, the smell of the air and the chirps of the birds reminded me of the mornings in my village, I even saw a few deer crossing the road and a baby monkey drinking from a discarded PET bottle. For a moment I forgot that this was Bombay, I found a real jungle amidst this bustling concrete jungle. The broker spoke with a typical South Indian accent; he was curt and spoke in short sentences. He told me about the rent and the brokerage he would charge for his services, his demeanor indicated he was not a man of bargaining but I am Indian after all and had to try out of courtesy, dutifully he refused my plain argument. A man of little words and a man who revered god every morning seemed less likely to con me. My mother says always trust two men; one a man of religion and other a man of medicine, well, my mother is naïve but so am I. The deed was done I had already imagined my life in this little flat. I would stare out at the balcony, look and breathe the greenery outside, stay in my small room where the walls pressed each other. Some might call it a prison, but it was my prison, a solitary confinement of choice. Although I rejoice freedom but boundaries when set at your convenience is freedom itself.

Soon even this change of space settled in; humans are mutable, either by choice or by situation, we can change into anything from Machiavellian to benevolent, from my killers to saints. I am not an organized person; I wouldn’t care to change things until there is absolute chaos, I wouldn’t move a finger until it becomes absolutely necessary to move it. One morning I woke up to find all my spoons and forks on the table, arranged in ascending order of size, the forks taking precedent to the spoons. I was drinking the other night, maybe in some utterly weird hallucination, I decided to arrange my cutlery. I let the incident go, if anything I should be proud of my hallucinatory behavior, I was a better organizer when inebriated. A week later it happened again, but this time something even stranger happened, a plate was neatly placed on my table, next to it a set of spoons and forks; this time I was sure it wasn’t me and had an ominous feeling about this entire incident. The people in my office talked about horror stories of Aarey colony, any place close to wilderness always makes a good setup for a horror story. A Google search will display articles by travel bloggers and news channels alike writing about paranormal activities at Aarey, witches asking of lifts in the middle of the night, gory details about a child eating a leopard, tribals practicing the occult. With some real-life evidence and few affirming testimonies about Aarey, I was genuinely scared. I started sleeping with my lights on, playing music on my speakers, hoping the ghost or whatever it is would leave me alone seeing my busy schedule. One morning I woke up to find my spoons and forks methodically arranged, with a plate neatly placed in the middle. Enough of this, it didn’t make any sense, I was not having horrifying experiences, no night sweats, no one pulling the covers in my sleep, it seemed more like a non-sense prank. I came up with an ingenious idea courtesy the countless movies I have watched, I took out my old tripod and set up my camera, I stealthily placed it behind the table. Every night I slept late and woke up as early as possible to check the footage, to find nothing, I would delete it and set it up for the night again. Two weeks passed and nothing happened, just when I was about to reach my threshold, a breakthrough. To my incredulous astonishment and strange relief; I found a monkey arranging my cutlery in the footage. It was not one of those monkeys you see in India, the primate version of golden retrievers, it did not have the typical pale yellowish fur and sunken eyes, it was rather completely black and had flaring nostrils. With its disproportionately long limbs and a tail that looked as strong as an elephant’s trunk, I was taken aback by its appearance, not by its unusual habit of arranging cutlery. The monkey looked familiar, something I might have seen on a BBC documentary but I couldn’t place it; after some online research, I found it was a spider monkey mostly found in the jungles of Mexico and South America. Aarey was definitely full of monkeys jumping off trees, snatching food from locals, and in general creating ruckus but a spider monkey was an alien here, I personally had never seen one. Now that the scope of paranormal activity was ruled out, I didn’t know how to react to this unusual incident. I did think it was a good story and could probably make it to one of those viral video pages, but even that was a tedious task, so I left it at that.

The next Sunday I opened a beer bottle at breakfast, what are Sundays for if not to be squandered away aimlessly. The soothing Beethoven’s silence concerto for background effect put me in deep slumber; I was woken up by a thud. The monkey was in the kitchen, he stood there with a spoon in its hand. Serving my basic instinct I ran behind the door, I thought he would just leave but he stood there transfixed. I shouted “Shoo, shoo”, increasing my volume with every shriek, a classic animalistic technique to show you are in control but he did not budge. A few minutes later, he broke out of his trance, placed the spoon on the table and left through the sliding door, and on his way out, slid the door back in. My kitchen had a sliding door that opened to a small balcony; all this while I had never thought of closing it from the inside, from then on I locked the door from inside. One morning I saw the monkey outside in the balcony, his eyes imploring me to open the door as if asking for permission. Unlike other monkeys he did not move swiftly nor did he have the typical aggression of displaying his canines, he looked too old and frail to make hasty jumps from trees but had the wisdom to know that if you wait patiently the universe has a way to reward you. Before leaving for office I opened the inside lock on the kitchen door; it was a gamble but it paid off, I came back to a symmetrically arranged set of spoons and dishes on the table; we had come to an unsaid agreement. The following Sunday I kept the door deliberately open; I scattered a few biscuits in the balcony, hoping he would take them as an invitation, I felt a strange kinship with him, something which can’t be penned down. I relished my solitude, but too much of it causes loneliness, and what had the time come to, I sat alone waiting for a monkey to come visit me. The entire afternoon passed, then it quickly became dark; he didn’t come, I was angry at him, a feeling of betrayal lingered on as if a promise was broken. With nothing much to do, I opened a beer can, I had a full crate in my fridge. I put Vivaldi’s Storm on the speakers; I liked how the concerto opened with rage and then slowed down like a lullaby that put you to sleep, but just like a storm just when you think it is over, the concerto comes to life again with the last spurt. I must have dozed off, I am not quite sure but I remember seeing him, sitting parallel to me but at a distance. With its eyes closed, it swayed his head with the movements of the concerto, his lanky arms moving like that of an amateur conductor. Sitting next to him I could see how old he was, his face was wrinkled and the veins on his temple looked like frail blue embroidery. My movement must have alerted him, he was taken aback like a thief caught red-handed, he took a step back and then he spoke. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you”, instead of shouting in paranoia or biting myself out of this dream I said, “No! I am sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you”. I don’t know how I accepted this improbable situation, it only seemed fair that I respond to his gentleness and chivalry with equal respect and etiquette. The monkey paused for a moment, then like a parent explaining his intrepid child, he said “I am sure, you would want an explanation to this”. I did not say anything; it was obviously a rhetorical question. He said, “I have lived here for long, longer than most people you see here today. You can guess from my appearance that I am not indigenous to this jungle. I don’t know where I belong but I was born here, the zoo to be more precise. I had a comfortable life there, I was close to my mother, food was abundant; the space was small but I didn’t care as I didn’t like to move much, I think it is a thing about our species. At the zoo, humans would throw empty bottles at us, make faces to incite us but would leave agitated because we didn’t jump or shriek like other monkeys, they wanted a witness our anger, our wild savage acts but we never gave in. My mother was particularly a rebel, she would often turn her back to the humans, she said that humans were cowards; they try to incite us while standing behind the safety of iron bars; if they had any guts, they should try this in the wild. Things were manageable until one day; there was a huge storm, the rain just wouldn’t stop, soon the zoo, the city, everything was flooded. The deluge killed many humans, many animals in the zoo died too, they drowned in the water as there were no zookeepers to help. Even my mother died in a fatal accident, she slipped a step and fell into the flooded water, we cried for help, I could see my mother’s voice getting muffled, it made me scream even harder, I kept screaming even after she was gone. I spent the night alone; the next morning I saw some monkeys leaving the zoo, some animals at the zoo survived this ordeal, especially the ones who could climb trees. I followed the monkeys of the other species, for them this was liberation, freedom at last; I wasn’t sure what it meant for me but I knew I could not stay there anymore. I tried to mingle with the other monkeys after we reached Aarey, although there was always an undercurrent of hatred, one day their leader bluntly said I was an outsider, I did not belong with them, and it was better if I leave and go back to my native land. There was no point in arguing; acceptance comes from the heart, not from the land; I accepted my fate as it came. Survival is not exactly difficult here, food was never a problem, there was enough in the dumpster near human colonies or if you were one of those types who hated privilege you could forage your own food, the jungle had ample opportunities. I lurked around the human colonies as it was the easier way out. Humans are strange creatures I must say; I have had my share of bittersweet experiences with them. There is a temple nearby, the other monkeys used to go there because you could get fresh bananas unlike the smelly and rotten ones you get in the dumpster, so one day I went there but my presence provoked violence, one human tried to hit me with a stick, I convinced myself that he did it out of fear, not out of hatred. I don’t understand where this fear stems from, where this prejudice comes from, was it because of the way I looked or was it because I was just different from what they expected; I never went to the temple again. I must tell you, I have a really special connection with this house, before you, a child used to live here who you could say was my friend. Even though I had picked up a few words at the zoo, it is here that I learned the language properly. The child’s parents used to stay out a lot, he told me his parents had important jobs; the child longed for their attention but his parents were either too tired or too busy. This lack of attention forged our relationship, he taught me how to speak and talk in English, I didn’t teach him anything in return, I only practiced what he taught; even with the power language I didn’t have much to say, maybe it is true that you speak through experiences, not through words. I guess his intention was pure yet self-serving; he just wanted a person or an animal who would listen to him, understand him, he treated me as an equal, not as an animal. It is he who taught me to arrange cutlery, he used to say table manners are very important, his parents had told him that; he was convinced that if I could learn table manners I would be half-human, not that I had any interest in becoming human but I played along anyway. Every night before his parents came back he would arrange the cutlery, arranging the spoons and forks according to their size, he would set up the plates and place the spoons and forks next to them taking extra care that all spoons and forks were equidistant from the plates. He would go around the table to eye his arrangement from different vantage points and coming back to make feather handed changes. His parents would come back to see this immaculate display, praise him for his attention to detail, hug him and encourage him to keep getting better at it; this gesture was enough for the child to keep going, it became a ritual, every day before his parents came we would set up the table, we had finally figured out the mechanism of love; that is why I kept setting your table, I wanted you to know I care, and see, here I am, finally talking to you. The child was right; this mechanism never fails if you follow it with sincerity. He used to say it was all about mathematics, about precision but I mostly followed my intuition, I could never perfect it like him. I generally don’t talk to humans, but you reminded me of that child; even he liked to listen to this kind of music, the kind which doesn’t have words, he used to say it helps him study. I came here because you reminded me of him, you know we three could have been friends, I can see that happening. The three of us have a lot in common, we are quiet observers, we like to take a seat and watch how the universe unfolds. I think I have said enough. I hope it made sense, I will bid goodbye now”. I did not say a word in the conversation, mostly because I didn’t have anything that you could add value; after all, you don’t speak with words but with experience. I hurried so that I could open the door for him but he walked himself out. I could only conjure a feeble Goodbye to which he said “Goodbye, my friend”.

The next day I tried to make sense of this bizarre experience; this extraordinary story demanded to be told but I thought maybe I should keep it to myself, maybe speak of it only in an extraordinary situation. But I did want to play detective, I thought of calling the house owner and asking if any of the previous tenants had any episodes with monkeys, I had to be very discreet about it to not sound ludicrous. I called the owner late in the evening asking if the previous tenants complained about monkeys entering the house or anything as such; he thought about it for a while and said “I don’t remember any such incident. But make sure you don’t put food outside in the balcony, it is bad manners.”