Monkey Business

"Whoa! What? Wait! Wait!"

He took off, waving three A4 sheets in my face. Three sheets that I had scribbled furiously on since dawn, driven by the sort of urgent creativity only a deadline looming large can inspire.

My tutorial assignment on Foreign Trade in India between 1920 and 1945.

There was no escaping them in Residence - and in Allnutt South in particular. The backyard shared a wall with the Ridge, and Allnutt Gate opened onto it. Monkeys were not just a part of the general landscape. They were the landscape.

What a rotten, rotten way to begin the week.

The tute was already three days overdue. [Why else do you think I rose at 4 a.m. on a dewy October morning?]

The monkeys owned the place. No two ways about it. They would brachiate into the backyard with abandon, timing their entry with that of the first ray of sunlight. And then they occupied infested the trees, the grounds, the staircases and the corridors. In all fairness, they didn't do much to bother the Residents. Not much, if you didn't take into account the shrieks that rang through the block every time a girl suddenly found herself face-to-face with a grinning monkey around a corner, or the regularity with which T-shirts and dupattas went missing from clotheslines.

But a tute? What monkey wants a tute?

Come what may, that assignment had to be handed in that day. The next two days were University holidays, and for all the credits that the tute was going to fetch me any later than that Monday, I knew I might as well not bother finishing it.

It had taken me the better part of three hours, frenzied rummaging through my notes, and vast amounts of imagination to produce about 1200 words on the topic. Because it was so eminently an eleventh-hour job, I didn't have time for the draft I usually made before writing my assignments. It was okay, I thought, busily highlighting key points. The tute would go in today. That was all that mattered.

I unscrambled myself out of my armchair, yawned, stretched and breathed in the morning air. Fresh. Good. Now that the job was done, maybe I could take a nap before class began at 8.40. Sleep was catching up with me again. It is interesting to recall that I smiled as I thought that it had been a good idea to choose the verandah over the room to write my tute in. Because it was the last time I smiled that day.

And, of course, because I thought it was a good idea.

Every time you ran into a monkey in Allnutt South, you were guaranteed to be left wondering exactly how the creature managed to make you feel like an intruder in your own block, outside your own room - assuming, that is, that the panic at seeing those teeth bared in a rude sneer left any room in your head for wonder.

I left my tute, glasses and pencil on the window ledge, and went into my room for some water. When I stepped out, it took me a moment to register that the ledge looked different. Figures, I thought, still sleepy. The monkey hadn't been there when I had turned to go into my room.

The what?

All sleep fled.



What was a monkey doing here? And those sheets it was clutching couldn't be...they weren't...

"Whoa! What? Wait! Wait!"

He took off, waving three A4 sheets in my face. Three sheets that I had scribbled furiously on since dawn, driven by the sort of urgent creativity only a deadline looming large can inspire.

My tutorial assignment on Foreign Trade in India between 1920 and 1945.