Of Simian Bondage
I see troupes of chattering monkeys of all sizes, shapes, and ages before me. Many of them sit in cozy groups, watching the world go by as they groom each other … The more adventurous ones swing from the branches with an ease that makes human acrobats clumsy…. One cheeky monkey even demands that I part with my duppatta and tugs at it… I meekly yield… and he saunters away with his catch until my friend uses counter threats to retrieve the duppatta…
I am in a simian paradise. I enjoy just watching and photographing monkeys; marveling at how human they are. Or how ape-like we humans are! Most of the monkeys are people-friendly. One of them even drinks water from a water bottle held by a man who has been a friend of the monkeys. Several of them even clamber up on to another man and perch on his shoulders as he feeds them biscuits! The baby monkeys are suspended upside down on trees and snatch the biscuits held out to them! I am amused by their capers, their bonhomie and merrymaking! I feel privileged that the monkeys let me gaze at them despite my outsider status.
A little apart, I see an adult female monkey, obviously a mother, with its baby monkey. The baby monkey has been mauled by a dog and one side of its face almost ripped off. Its ears are gouged out and hang loose suspended by a thin flesh. The monkey is just a few weeks old. It looks fragile and the attack has made it most vulnerable. The baby monkey hobbles towards it mother and its arms encircle her. The mother monkey engulfs her child in a protective embrace.
I see a look of anguish on the adult monkey’s face as she examines the wounds. The baby monkey seems to have surrendered and is ready to let go…. Admittedly, it was hard for the adult monkey to do so and she mentally traffics in possibilities, ways and means to help her little one… not unlike human mothers…. The baby monkey dissolves in its mother’s sanctuary-like body… The adult monkey’s arm ever so gently holds her child, sorrow and loss etching lines of grief on her face…
