Here, There & Elsewhere. Monkey tours

Back in Delhi, Bins and I find that a group of monkeys has taken to visiting the house. They walk along the boundary walls of the colony, leap into trees and sun themselves on unoccupied balconies. There are four adults and one baby. They are very regular. They come in early in the afternoon, just before lunch, spend a couple of hours in the neighbourhood and move back out again.

This morning, I am standing in the tiny front garden looking at a patch of grass that Bins wants to draw my attention to.

“It’s a breed of grass that likes the shade,” he says. I nod politely, but am distracted by the sight of a pair of slender feet dangling between the bamboo that occupies the right-hand corner of the narrow strip of earth we call a garden and the front wall.

“Look!” I exclaim, thinking for a moment that a small child is perched there. “It’s ... oh! A monkey.” The creature hears me and looks in my direction, but doesn’t budge. She is a full-grown macaque, about the size and shape of a tired brown backpack, her shoulders hunched, her short tail ragged. She looks neither scared nor angry. Just extremely, terminally sad. Bins glances over his shoulder too. “Oy, Minkie!” he says, using the same name that Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies used when speaking of simians. “This is not your place, eh? I don’t want you to even look at my poor little patch of baby-grass! Maybe you should move on?”

Minkie’s pale amber eyes do not even blink. “Don’t hassle me, Human,” she says. Then she adds, as an afterthought, “Please.” She turns her head and looks away, as if the effort of even paying attention to us is too much for her. I’ve never seen such indifference from a monkey. I don’t know whether or not to be insulted. I look around, wondering where the rest of her family are. That’s when I see they’re all around.

The big male with the harelip and the ugly expression in his eyes is sitting guard at the very corner of the boundary, where two walls meet. Up in the tree, just by where I’m standing, is a second female. Further up, on the balcony of the neighbouring house is the third female. The baby tumbles into view just then, stirring the leaves above my head. The second female tenses, bobbing her head at me. But Minkie, from where she is on the front wall, says, “Don’t bother threatening. Humans don’t understand us anyway.” She turns towards the rear of the house. All her movements are slow and tired. “Time to move on.”

They file past us, the four adults and the baby, walking along the wall. Their fur is patchy, their limbs are thin and their red-skinned faces are scarred with fights and accidents. They don’t even glance in our direction. “Migrants,” whispers Bins in my ear. “Survivors of endless wars. No one wants them. No home. No food. No shelter.” As they reach the rear wall, the baby is sitting on its mother’s back, looking at us with trusting, wistful eyes. Then one by one the adults climb the wall and are gone. Till tomorrow.

Manjula Padmanabhan , author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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