REFLECTIONS | b ashok
MONKEYING IN MUSSOORIE
MONKEYING IN MUSSOORIE
How the apes influence our future administrators
OUR verdant Mussoorie campus is cohabited (along with officers, trainers and trainees) by around 400 rhesus monkeys. They are everywhere, foraging from dinner leftovers, fruit trees and even residential litter boxes. Most are of rhesus variety – the ugly yellow grey ones; and some are langurs – the black-faced taller ones. They are protected by the Wildlife Act and rhesus monkeys are also revered as descendants of Hanuman by the local populace. These factors work in their favour and all attempts by the Academy to relocate them or control their occasional misbehaviour have been wasted.
The 300-odd rhesus monkeys are also divided into three or four constantly warring clans, each led by a vicious chieftain. My first encounter with a large adult sparring chieftain was awesome. We had recently moved into our residence behind Kalindi Guest House and I was rushing down the stairs for a meeting. Hey presto! – as in Kalyan as ougandhikam, there he sits at the head of the stairs, ignoring my shooing or pleadings to give way. Optionless, I lifted a broken brick and aimed. He snarled and glared, showing his canines, and turned around in full ambush posture. His war cry is still ringing in my ears. Responding calls poured out from atop the water tanks. I barely escaped with my shirt on. Since then I keep an air rifle, which seems to have an impact on the clan, and use it very often to clear the way.
Generally, monkey chiefs spare adults unless you get caught in the crossfire when the clans are fighting ferociously! If the chieftain is securing his exclusive access to the choice female under challenge, well, even if you are adult, they may spring on you, mistaking you to be an additional challenger. Observing them brings to my mind the theory of my esteemed trainee from Haryana, explaining most of the ills in our system. It can be called the theory of the “jhavad bandar”. I had the good fortune to travel with this worldly-wise gentleman to the US and back on training. Naturally, officers discuss the ills of politicians, the “system”, and so on. For every ill conclusively identified, our gentleman would retort, with a loud drool on his glass of scotch: “Sirjee, sab jhavad bandar ki kahani hai (All this is the story of the chieftain monkey).” He would explain the dominating strategies of the jhavad vis-a-vis the females, and conclude: “Sab unke hain, aur baki sab sirf thali bajatey rehtey hain (The winner takes all, the rest remain clapping).” Besides, when we were trainees in 1998, quite a few lady trainees complained of regular loss of costly underwear left out to dry. In those days we did not have launderettes in the hostels.
After an extended stay in Europe during which I witnessed the historic Ivrea carnival near Milan, I can understand what he meant. Ivrea is a small town where the custom of Prima Nocta (the first post-marriage night of every virgin being claimed by the local feudal lord) was challenged by one Violetta who resisted him and beheaded the lord. To celebrate this, Ivreans dress up like agents of the feudal lord, roam around in horse-drawn decorated carts and pelt one another with ripe oranges on the appointed winter day. Around seven million oranges are pelted by sunset! Among the more mundane pranks of the monkeys is flicking innocuous things with serious consequences. A pair of my trousers turned up in the washed pile of our neighbours, the Chopras. In fact, Mr Chopra discovered this when he tried to wear the trousers and found he had space for more than himself! Fortunately, all of us are very understanding husbands and wives, and promptly blamed the monkeys for the trouser switch. But for the monkeys, I cannot imagine how I would have answered Preeti on how my trousers cannot keep themselves to our wardrobe!
BESIDES, when we were trainees in 1998, quite a few lady trainees complained of regular loss of costly underwear left out to dry. In those days we did not have launderettes in the hostels. The gentlemen of the services cannot be stealing women’s underwear, though I have met quite a few queers fond of flicking many a strange thing! It is not funny all the time. A couple of children of faculty members were mauled and had to undergo vaccination. There was pressure on me, then in charge of estates, to control the menace. We explored options. We located a firm of monkey controllers / catchers. One hitch stopped the operation. The firm said it would charge a few thousand rupees per day of operation, irrespective of the number of monkeys caught and transported away into jungles. Our finance adviser would not accept this. The firm had to be paid even if no monkey was caught. He wanted a “per monkey foolproof quote” while the firm wouldn’t have any of it.
The “jhavad bandars” had their lucky day and were free to run amok again. Then, my colleague and friend, Rajesh Aryaji, had an innovative hightech plan to instal an ultrasound scare near the faculty and OT residences. But the effect on human health of this gadgetry is under study since what is scary for monkeys cannot be totally harmless for humans, with their being 99.5 per cent genetically related to us. (Aryaji corrects me that some prankster probationers are 150 per cent related.) Some faculty members feel that trainees are challenging enough without any prospective ultrasound-induced mutations!
Seriously, the Academy is a place where we have to throw the monkeys on our backs away and come out of our comfort zones. Weightlessness to fly high is the aim, freedom in thinking and action comes through freeing the binds and comfort zones of the mind. Monkeys, jhavad and lowly, add to the challenge and remind us of the fluidity of the world we inhabit. Let them be, let us be, and let us keep learning from each other.
(The writer is Private Secretary to the Minister of State for Agriculture and was earlier deputy director of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.)
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