[Photo Credits: Vinayak
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vinayak1989/5450645184/in/pool-iit-madras/]
Gone are the good old days when the air was clean, the earth was green and life was carefree. Ever since these geeks with inflated egos and non-existent tails entered, our life has been hard. And more entertaining.
The other day, just as I was about to retire to my quarters, my baby daddy called out to me, asking me to make it to the third level. I had been in the game for too long to believe his promises of a feast. Even if he were being honest, all that teeth-baring for what would probably be a container of caked noodles did not seem worth the effort to me. I pretended to have a toe-infection and made a dash to my quarters. When I woke up after a few banana hours to start the day with my vocal exercises, I realized that I was alone in my screeching. Putting it down to late working hours and cursing the influence of insti culture on our ancient species, I decided to wait until everything turned light. After the glorious, unreachable orange cake turned everything light and pale, I went to wake my troop-mates up, only to find them huddled in the slippery, stinky room with too many taps. The sight that greeted me is one that I still wear around my neck. I find it difficult to describe just how much food there was without my tails twitching wildly. While I was sleeping, all of them had found an opening and entered a room. It had turned out to be quite big with a few of those irritating creatures inside. My troop-mates had started straining their vocal cords to evacuate disturbances when they realized that it was not necessary. The foolish beings were sound asleep and did not move through the entirety of the hunt. And oh, did they find a feast!
Out of pride, I refused to grab the food and found myself some fruits from the sun-drenched trees. While we take food from rooms, shops and from those who flaunt it on the roads, the trees remain my favourite source for food and space for dining. Peaceful, spacious and far from the reach of those bespectacled creatures, joy lies in munching on leaves and washing it down with Kaapi Nirvana. My parents keep insisting that we are meant to eat leaves, flowers and fruits and that we should stick to that. We have vegetarian teeth, apparently. Chomping on insects and spiders, I feel like quite the rebel.
When the orange cake turns very orange and the trees start sagging with fruits, every day is a harvest. One of my favourite summer activities is to climb those delectable, rooty banyan trees and munch on fruits, while dropping some for the branch horned friends gathered below to eat. If only the weird, two-legged humans would be symbiotic enough to do the same for us. They leave food for those loud barkers and swift meowers all the time.
In any case, my grandmother has taught me ways to survive in this tough world. I can gather a lot of food very quickly. I have quite mastered the art of storing food in the pouch in my mouth and chewing it later, in safety. While these are important achievements, nothing beats the sense of pride I derive every time I knock on a two-legged creature’s room and trick it into creating an opening. They really are quite stupid, those humans.
Being a monkey in a man’s world is hard. Being shouted at and pelted every day is not very enjoyable. But every time I am reminded of the fact that there are people whose life mission is to chase me or when I get my hands on a 12-inch corn and cheese pizza, being a monkey seems to be worth it.
