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‘It’s a silly plan, that’s why,’ said Mr Gupta, although it was not his place to say anything. ‘It will cause all sorts of bad smells and unsanitary conditions and that too in a holy place. And, no doubt, our fly problem would get worse.’

‘We must categorically refuse your request,’ said the CMO.

‘Yes,’ said the DC, who was still thinking of the adages.

But when at the end of the day they realized they had come up with no workable plan, they drove home somewhat subdued.

The police superintendent brought the DC the news that the monkeys had been on another expedition and raided the cupboards of the retired District Judge. They had taken five bottles of whisky and bounded away before the servants had even realized what had happened.

The DC went back to his bungalow and sat down worriedly. There he had been, laughing in a way he did only with his one close friend – miraculously his shyness had
somewhat disappeared that day – but the problem had not been solved. He must not forget his responsibilities. He mulled things over, but could not think of anything that would raise his spirits. When the cook served his dinner, for it was already quite late in the evening, he was even further discouraged; he saw, with a sinking feeling of his heart, that his meal consisted of burnt-looking cutlets upon one of the grubbiest plates he had ever seen. Just where a pattern of flowers or, say, stripes should have been, the platter was stamped about with dirty fingerprints. The cook put it down before him with an unceremonious thump, then, without looking at the DC, turned and left.

Government officials did not know how to eat properly any more. The cook felt full of bitterness. And unable to make cutlets the first night, he had been struck with an unshakeable determination to make cutlets the second night. He made cutlets with a vengeance, a whole pile of them, and what insipid tasteless things they were – the DC was forced to bring out his mother’s pickle to add a bit of flavour to his meal. He felt as miserable as ever.

Miserable as ever, and alone, sitting there by himself at one end of the huge dining table. A bare bulb dangled from a wire above him and cast a dim light upon the table, while the rest of the room disappeared into darkness around him. The windows were black, gaping holes to his right and left. Sad, dirty curtains hung limply at their sides. He got up, drew the grey fabric together and sat back down to his cutlets. Oh, how would he be able to finish the awful, charred things?

Just as he was wondering whether to flush them down the toilet, he was interrupted by Mr Chawla.

‘Who is it?’ said the DC, alarmed.

‘It’s the Monkey Baba’s father,’ said Mr Chawla and,
opening the flimsy wooden door that led in from the front veranda, he stepped inside. ‘I too,’ he said firmly, ‘have a proposal to make.’

‘What proposal?’ asked the DC, putting down his knife. A wave of tiredness swept over him. It had been a long day. He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

‘Let us train the army and police as monkey catchers,’ said Mr Chawla. ‘Decide on a day in the near future and catch all the monkeys in one go. We can use the army trucks to convey them to a far-off forest, preferably in another state, from where it will be impossible for them to return or to obtain any liquor. They will have to resume the life they should be leading as monkeys, eating forest fruits and nuts.’

The DC sat back, considering what he had heard. There seemed to be no problem with that … Who on earth could object? Monkeys eating forest fruits and nuts … It painted a very pretty picture. Provided it would work. At first glance, anyway, it was a harmless enough proposal. And this was the Baba’s father who was proposing this plan. Surely he would do only what was best for his son. With a rush of compassion, he remembered Sampath, who had turned his back on him when he paid a visit to the orchard. ‘Perhaps you have thought of something,’ he said, playing with his cutlets. And he thought it over some more.

Mr Chawla stood and waited.

He had not been moved to laughter or shouted slogans like the other fools during the day’s earlier meetings. The orchard had disintegrated into a sorry state and he knew his life there was in danger of drawing to a close. Already, the flow of money into the bank accounts was dwindling. There were no more talks, no more gentle evenings; there
was no more laughter. Sampath sat miserably, as if hiding now, in his tree. And Mr Chawla had noticed the way his son was slipping back into his old silences, into his old opaque and unhappy manner, the way his eyes were losing their quiet, contented look and glazing over. His good humour and his sense of fun had disappeared altogether, and ever since the DC’s visit he had stayed facing the leaves, preoccupied, for all his father knew, with the thought of leaving. What if Sampath should climb down from the tree, run away and spoil everything? No, this would not do. Things would have to be resolved. The monkeys would have to be dealt with and peace restored. And clearly, he thought, after the day’s meetings and discussions, you could not leave anything to bureaucratic ineptitude. He had grown steadily more frustrated through all of the day’s earlier plans and meetings. Behind this frustration, though, there was something more: a terrible sadness and a feeling of vulnerability he did not wish to investigate, though it lapped against his immediate concerns, giving him, despite himself, the unsettling feeling of being afloat upon an infinite ocean. He would not, could not, consider this. To think of such things, he was sure, would mean drilling holes in his watertight heart; all sorts of doubts would pour in and he would be a lost man.

‘What do you think of my plan?’ he asked the DC.

The District Collector moved a bit of cutlet from one end of the plate to the other. ‘Yes,’ he said again, more certainly this time, ‘perhaps you have thought of something.’ The proposal involved no guns, no religious matters, no business interests that he could see. It should at least be given a try. And he was the DC, after all, he remembered with a rush. If he said ‘Yes’, it meant ‘Yes.’ As firmly as he could,
he said: ‘Yes, this is a workable plan. Of course, the Baba will have to descend from his tree temporarily, or he might suffer injury,’ and he ate the last bit of pickle on his plate and pushed away his cutlets. ‘Khansama,’ he shouted to the cook, ‘please do not make cutlets ever again. Never ever. No cutlets, no fish fry, no mutton chops, no aloo mash, no vegetable boil, no tomato soup, no fritters, no trifle, no caramel custard, no English food …’ He practically panted as he said this.

The cook appeared at the doorway, stood for a minute in his soiled red coat with a filthy black dishrag over his shoulder and then gave the DC a look of withering scorn. Without a word, he turned and disappeared back down the black corridor into the reaches of the cavernous and sooty kitchen.

On Monday evening the monkeys returned from the English Wine and Beer shop tipsy. On Wednesday they attempted to break into the Club for Retired Members of the Court. And on Thursday they held to ransom top-secret documents in the army’s headquarters that outlined safety precautions taken by the Indian army against invasion. They would not give them up until they were bribed with bottles from the bar in the mess.

With remarkable speed, the necessary permission for Mr Chawla’s plan was granted, the requisite papers stamped, orders given to the army and police, and a date set for Monday, the last day of April, for Sampath’s temporary descent from the tree and the capture and transport of the Shahkot monkeys to a destination far away from Shahkot.

‘I will not descend,’ said Sampath.

‘But the descent is temporary. You can climb down and then, a few hours later, you can climb back up.’

But Sampath did not quite believe this. If he climbed down, somehow, he was sure, he would not get to climb up again. No doubt they would try to bundle him into some outrageous hermitage. Anyway: ‘I will not live without the monkeys,’ he said firmly, holding on to his initial position and not in the mood for compromise. Beneath his tree Miss Jyotsna wept.

Ammaji gave her a dirty look. ‘Why don’t you go home for a while?’ she said, nudging her with a fly swatter. ‘You are spoiling his mood even more.’

Kulfi winked kindly at her son, but her thoughts were far away. A monkey, she thought, and her eyes gleamed, looking like dark lakes pierced by sun. A monkey. How would she cook this fascinating monkey? On the last day of the month of April …

Should she bake it in a tandoor? Simmer and stew it? Stuff or fry it? Roll it into banana leaves, fill it into chickens or goose eggs? Mix it into a naan? Seal it in an earthen pot? Season it with saffron? Scent it with cloves? Cook it with pomegranate juice?

Sampath looked and found no help in the faces of his family. How much had changed since he had first arrived in the orchard such a short time back. How quickly it was becoming more and more like all he hoped he had left behind for ever. Ugly advertisements defaced the neighbouring trees; a smelly garbage heap spilled down the hillside behind the tea stall and grew larger every week. The buzz of angry voices and the claustrophobia he had associated with life in the middle of town were creeping up upon him again. And now they were getting rid of his favourite company in the orchard! Didn’t they know how fond he was of the monkeys? And didn’t they know how little he cared for all of
them?
Why didn’t they take their advertising,
their noise and dirt, their cars and buses and trucks, why didn’t they take their little minds and leave him to his peace and quiet, to his beloved monkeys, to his beautiful landscape that was being so dirtily and shoddily defaced?

He would have to escape. But how? How could anyone manage this? They would not let him go. If he descended from the tree, they would catch him. If he stayed, things would only get worse. He recognized the old feeling of being caught in a trap …

Oh, but he would have to leave! How, how, how? He thought, but his thoughts found no resolution and merely revolved, more and more of the same, around and around in his head. At last, from what the devotees could observe, he fell into a sort of stupor.

‘Let him be,’ said his father. ‘On the morning of 30 April we will bring him down and, before he knows it, it will all be over.’

‘All be over …’ Sampath heard, as if from very far away.

A few days after Mr Chawla had proposed his plan, it was put into action. The monkey catchers began to be trained at a furious pace, even though nobody was quite sure what exactly the training should consist of. The Brigadier, who was still holding a grudge because his own idea had been passed over in favour of this weak and messy plan, shouted orders at his suffering men through his megaphone, putting them through their paces, making them leap from trees, slide down ropes, do handstands and sit-ups, and go running for miles up and down the hillside, so much so that people complained that not only were the monkeys disturbing the peace but those wretched army boys were as well. Thudding across gardens and trampling flowers, they ran through private property and left trails through flowerbeds and vegetable fields, waking people at dawn the next day, and every day after that, by resuming these disgraceful activities. The very ground trembled as they approached; it was like the approach of an earthquake.

But when the Brigadier received complaints, he explained how, had he been allowed to pursue his own proposal, he would have no reason to submit his men to this charade. They all knew how to fire guns. They would have gone to the orchard and, a couple of hours later, the job would have been done. Now, since they had not supported him right at the beginning, they would have no option but to suffer. ‘Situp,
double march, hop to it, somersault,’ he ordered. And: ‘The sooner this is all over the better,’ mumbled the townsfolk.

Meanwhile, the police were luckier than the army men, for it had been generally agreed upon that they were incapable of taking an active part in something on such a great scale as this and instead they had been given the job of preparing the nets that were to be used to catch the monkeys. Under the gentle jurisdiction of the superintendent, they sat lazily outside the police station with a pile of fishing nets and metal rings, needles and nylon rope, not at all sure of what they ought to be doing, but enjoying themselves like old fisherwomen fussing with the nets in the afternoon sun. ‘Arre, Chottu,’ they called to the tea boy. ‘Arre, over here,’ to the sweet-potato seller, the peanut man and the cold-drink cart. Thus they made the most of this time and were content.

About Sampath’s tree there was a feeling of the air being stretched tight and wrapped around and around him. When he peered down, all he could see was an ugly sea of humanity. Nobody respected his visiting hours any more. Several men marched about the periphery of the orchard, banging the ground with sticks and blowing upon whistles in a round-the-clock watch instituted by Mr Chawla to give warning of any disturbance. These dangerous days, who knew what would happen, what they would have to watch out for, which unexpected happening? They were not safe. Also, of course, they had to keep a watch for the monkeys. What would they do next? At the slightest rustle in the night, they shone bright torches into the trees; often Sampath found himself awakened by a searchlight-like glare. If only these watchmen would fall asleep at their posts the way watchmen were known to do, thought Sampath. But
no, this lot were an insomniac brigade, tireless and unnervingly zealous in their duties. At the first hint of dawn, the crowds arrived with their loudspeakers and he was enveloped once again in slogan-shouting and argument.

How, how would he manage his escape?

He was practically ill with worry and nerves by now, unable any more to sleep and unable to eat. His mother tried this and that to tempt his appetite, to resurrect his fading rosy cheeks, but nothing seemed to work … not the little river fish he so loved, not the fiery chillies from her own especially fiery chilli bush, not the plump, sleepy pigeons with their tender melting flesh, not an enormous goldfish she caught in the ornamental pond in the convent grounds. Never mind … never mind. Soon she would offer him something altogether new, something to spark his spirits and jerk him to life. On Monday, the thirtieth day of April. She began to put together the ingredients for the feast to come. It was a hard process, for the main ingredient was an entirely new one, of course, and still mysterious to her. She had no idea of its savour, its toughness, its heaviness or lightness, its darkness, or its power as a catalyst to bring other flavours to fullness. Her preparations would have to be made with only instinct to guide her, the sureness of instinct, buoyed by a bringing together of all her expertise, all her talents, to make a triumph of what might be her only chance to cook this creature …