Musings

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “A Moment in Time.”

Mind is a monkey is quoted often , most of the time to mean that mind can play havoc ! But look at this monkey that lent a hand just in time to two women struggling to get a job done.

A close look at the picture will reveal the flower of a plantain tree in the hands of the monkey. You would think the monkey intended to eat it , but no.

The Samaritan Monkey

A group of about 20 of us were at a temple in the outskirts of Chennai ( South India ) celebrating the 60th birthday of a family member. Rituals in full swing in one part of the temple while in the makeshift kitchen , frayed tempers as 2 cooks raced against time to whip up a festive meal. The supplies had come in late. The heat of the noon made it worse and amidst all this , a monkey that had perched itself on the roof of the kitchen swoops down , only to pick up the banana flower and a sheet of paper , trots away and seats itself where you see it in the pic.

Incidentally in South India , banana flower fritters are a delicacy that is served in festive meals. But our banana flower here was gone , no , going away ! We tried to scare the animal away in the hope of retrieving the flower , but the monkey ignored us ! Our helplessness or anger turned to amazement as the monkey started peeling segments of the flower and throwing them down on the paper that it had snatched from the kitchen ! In less than 5 minutes , the flower had been stripped of its segments ( our cooks would have needed half an hour ). And as we stood watching marveling at its dexterity , the ape chucked the stem of the flower across the wall , swung to the other pillar and made its way to I don’t know where.

Lost for words , we were. The banana flower fritters got made alright and they tasted special , the labour of the mammal had infused an extra dollop of yumminess !

Mr Monkey was the talk of the town for the next 2 days. Sheer coincidence that my earlier blog detailed the sensitivity of crows and now a monkey ! Some monkey behaviour , this !

I am a Crow. My name is Bob. But the grand old lady calls me Baba.

We , birds also tire of flying sometimes and we land on the nearest safest perch. And we get to see so much happening around us , some of which we don’t understand.

My friend is also a bird. “My name is Ramu and I am a parrot” , he first introduced himself ! I felt lost , what was he saying ? He kept mouthing more gibberish and I looked away because it seemed like he was showing off ! After a bit , he returned to our bird language and we trotted along together , Ramu in his cage and me on the outside. Every time we met , the first few lines would be what he had learnt the previous day and when he ran out of words in that strange language , he would slip back into our tiny world. We crows are an intelligent breed you see , birds with a brain , so I started recognising some words. I learnt some , but I am not a parrot , I cannot mimic even , let alone speak ! So I learnt that Ajay who is always moving around in that house is a man and Amma who never leaves her chair is a woman. And I watched how Ajay painstakingly taught Ramu new words everyday. They even had a conversation , it sounded so nice , I wanted to do so too with my family and friends around me , living in neighbouring trees. We get together several times in a day. We have so much to share in a language of our own.

So yesterday , after flying around for a while , I perched myself on the wall of some place , don’t know what it’s called and saw one man distributing food to many. We recognise food anywhere and I flew in there too , but they shooed me away. I went back to my perch. Suddenly they were all flying at each other in anger , trying to grab more food than was being given. I was stunned , nevertheless took my chance of trying to peck at the food that had been strewn on the floor , but they shooed me away again. I felt sad and flew away to another place and thought of the scene every morning , when The Man Ajay feeds us with crumbs of bread and sometimes some very tasty stuff.

It has become a habit now. We have a way of sensing time , we crows. My fellow crows and me wait on the branches of the trees or we fly around till we see him step out of the house with food in his hand. He pieces food into bits and lays them on the wall of the compound , looking around for us. I am sure he can’t recognise us one from the other , we all look the same. The one closest to the food swoops down and takes his pick or two and moves away. We take turns to land on the wall , sometimes waiting at a distance till our friend ahead of us is done. Sometimes , some of us don’t get any at all , its alright , we don’t fly at each other , we go looking for food elsewhere and when we do find some we caw out to our family and friends to come and share it with us. Period !

mythoughtlane : The ‘food to the crows’ scene is not imaginary , I witness this every morning in my neighbourhood , amazed and left wondering at the same time.