The Monkey Catching Game and the Commentary

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        The Monkey Catching Game and the Commentary

If someone in a surefire way said that history repeats itself, first as a tragedy and second time as a farce, then the semianic history of the village validated the point to the limits of substantiated truthfulness.

Monkeys with their usable fore-paws, or call them hands, give a stiff competition to we humans–-or just a bit more advanced mannequins-–in our habits of lampooning critiques and misadventures. Now, that was exactly the reason why the semians had been battered out of the village a good twenty years back. Some were perfidiously killed-–don’t forget they belong to the clan of mighty God of monkeys, Lord Hanuman. Some were left half dead with an unapish lackluster look on their faces, heaped inside big sacks and then dumped at farthest of places by the villagers to escape their untiring fete with its credo of repudiation of any sort of brainy evolution inside the head of their progenies. The mischief mongers were killed with guns, sticks, spears, stones, or whatever the revengeful village could find in a fit of fury. After that the village remained free from the trouble shooters. During this time, the village children had their indoctrination into the mocking pall-mall by watching the tamed and trained monkey couples, usually nicknamed Basanti and Dharmendra, performing in the streets.

But a year ago, a big burly male, pink-red buttocked and prominent testicles shabbily hung between its legs, came into the village from nowhere. Instantly the children billed him as their next favourite persona. All alone, thus incapable of any hoodlumming, he scaled the roofs with his sulkily specious look. The loner was thus eagerly waiting for a nuisant cavalcade behind him: the rallyists for an uncivilized melee.

The hirsute animal, hence, in a deft connivance with his soul pining for mischiefs, would conspiratorially disappear for a week or two and then return with one or two younger lots. Quite evidently the king was floating a community. And when a female with her brickbatting old mannerisms joined the group, hell broke loose for the lustily crooked scraps. Their soberly dull life had been at last spiked with spice. All of them, right from the littlest to the King, could be seen mating with the helpless female through days and nights amidst the cheering and egging by the children. This no-holds-barred love-making gung-ho had many human sexual overtones. So, the human females of the village giggled shyly at this pivotal game between the two genders.

In a short period of time she gave birth to the biologically maximum possible cubs. Then the monkeys cast their net for irreconcilable foolhardiness: broken pitchers, torn clothes, bricks thrown from the roof tops, swings at the TV antennae, and of course some churlish bites to anyone who tried to disturb them without a sufficiently long stick. One younger idiot went to the extent of seemingly masturbating endeavours. Sitting on the parapets it would squeeze its peanuttish penis to pep out an erection and then start tinkling it with fingers with a leering look at the human females as if it was inviting them to join in the game. The bastard seemed addictively jingoistic while farcing away the paltry humanity shrouded in its countless inhibitions and clothing. So, it was enough of the semian fusillade. The villagers were perambulating revenge.

A good commentator, Birender, had his commenting inertia still going on, now a couple of days after his oracular stint at the inter-village cricket tournament. Though the sporting event had come to an end, he still possessed the loudspeaker, batteries as well as the unwilting urge for commentary.  Going by the strictures of his instinct, at about nine in the morning, he thundered into the mike from the middle of the village.

“Attention, attention please.... Hello, Hello! Today we’ve decided to end the monkeys’ dirty game. I’m Birender here to tell you the running commentary of the monkey catching game. In front of me is Mr. Rakesh with a huge stick, almost a tree trunk! He’s all prepared to avenge the biting of his wife by the fat monkey. So, he’s the deputed captain of the team. I expect a great performance from him. We wish him good luck to win the game today. Then we have Ramesh, Mohan... and rest of our young army.”

The announcement was followed by a huge uproar by the beating squad, which then mulched upon the nearest monkey. The hoary squad, now increasing with resolute gradualism, ran through the streets and climbed on the roofs, entered anybody’s house, sneaked up the staircases to the upper storeys without any permission. The monkeys spread out in four directions on their defensive escapades, as the crowd bumbled along them.

To catch the action live, Birender followed the main group of the monkeys with his set. Skiddingly, the apes got scattered into each and every corner of the village. But wherever they went, they themselves spread the word; consequently in each street and locality spontaneous squads propped up. There was a grabbing scramble among so many hunters for so few preys. People got onto their housetops, thus not allowing the fleeing mockers to take a refuge there. The monkeys were thus forced to run through the streets. Here the marauding bunches ran with a jubilant gush as they counted their heaped ancestors.

When some youngsters, hopping and twittering, became too gamy about the game, haggling voice of the commentator exhorted them loudly.

“Look, this isn’t a medium of entertainment! It’s a serious matter!” he belched, and they became serious again.

From rooftops people in pleasing predicament were pointing out the escaping route of the monkeys. It was such a torrential communication system that the poor animals scurrying for cover were quickly spotted and thrashed by their cheering audience of the past. This thronging excursion went on for about two hours.

Then the commentator, who was till now heaping praise upon the good performers with sticks and bad publicity for the nonchalantly witnessing nonparticipants, suddenly announced that six foes had been caught in sacks and five had completed their naughty journey. He then singled out two heroes for heir great thwacking performance.

The motley squad fuelled by an unending excitement seemed never to run out of steam. Some of them ran with empty sacks to collect fallen heroes from the routed monkey band. Three or four insane and mentally retarded humans were slurping big draughts of this foolishly eliciting saga. Very aptly they were cashing in on this gawking frenzy, which’d given them an opportunity to participate in a game-–a monkey game to be precise-–in which no multiplex fresco of a well functioning brain was required.

After one more hour, to keep afloat the subsiding morale the commentator announced that only two enemies remained to be caught or killed, whichever came first. The king was one of them. Hugely built, he’d shown a great stamina in the face of hyper-critical quandary. A few times the toppled down sovereign got hit on his back with a full force, but somehow avoided a roll into the dust. In his all encompassing apish showcaseness he was acrobating to the hilt to escape the gaggling charivari now concocting all its venom against him primarily.

Half-an-hour later, the other loitering wretcher surrendered in a sack opened before it like the gate of a prison cellar. The king scooted away to the highest branch of a eucalyptus in the school. So the peripheral saga got concentrated around a single tree. The commentator too left for the school; but not before thanking the ladies for their great help of the day.

They threw stones at the lone survivor high up in the branches, unleashing the throw with dirtiest of obscenities. Ignominiously big monkey had just surrendered to a dreary fate. At the highest affordable branch which could negotiate the gravity’s graveness, he perched himself without moving his body as if he was stonily insensitive to the whims and caprices of the world. The commentator challenged him to come down and feign a ferocious attack as he used to do earlier. But it was a different ball game altogether. He wasn’t the fat monkey of the earlier times who gnawed out a shimmeringly ferocious pout, whenever someone dared to point even a finger at him.

Women of the village were the worst sufferers at the hands of his stubbornness. He just won’t even bother about the stick in their hands while he was pensively mulching something from their kitchens; and after burping down whole lot of things, the burly human-ancestor looked strong and menacing enough to defeat the mightiest man in the village in a wrestling duel.

Now, to undo the imbroglio, a boy from the Lodhi-Rajput community offered his tree-climbing services. People of this caste are expert in horse riding and scaling tallest of trees. Amid clappings and compliments from the commentator the impeccable climber started the job gingerly. He straggled up the trunk of the tall tree as a precursor to the king’s imminent defeat. When he reached near the monkey, the animal’s insipidly dreary look catapulted to a ruinous growl. In the heated freak of a moment, the beast flustered on its sobriety, and the tentative branch gave into the increased gravity. So, down went the king shuffling and straddling through twigs, branches and leaves. When his falling ordeal came to an end, he found himself in a frightening dungeon. Baroque encirclement around him was just ready to prod and hit as many sticks as possible in a smallest unit of time. The animal seemed to make a good use of its pantomimic brain which promptly made him realise through some vague animalistic sense or perception that even a slightest of movement will reward him with at least hundred good strikes. Bemoaningly he gave in to the mobocracy. Now was the time to pay for his brash muddlements in the human affairs. The blasphemer thus fell down facewards as if shy to show his defeated face or out of pain on losing the kingdom. He fell feigning a commensuration to death. Head of the striking squad bent over the dusted sovereign.  He gave many hard slaps at the thickly haired neck, but the ashamed animal didn’t give even a single reaction to the striker’s coercion. Then two of them lifted the feigner’s heap, which dangled down as if it was a big honeycomb of bumble-bees, and threw it into a sack.

Now when the crusade against the malpractitioners was over, facts were the first casualty. Earlier it was being believed that the monkeys had been petrifyingly beaten and hence many of them died.  It became clear now that only one had died in fact, rest of them performed death scene to any actor’s delight, in order to avoid further strikes. The fact was,    when the semians realised that there was no fitting place for their rudderless vanity in a human society, or vice-versa, they just dropped themselves on the ground pretending death.

All the sacks with their openings tied firmly with cords were dumped in a tractor’s trolley and taken to the tehsil town at a distance of fifteen kilometres, where the district road reached on its westward journey.