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Sampath stared up into the mountains, tilting his head all the way back, to look upon where there was not a trace of civilization. There, up high, as if tumbling from the sky, a waterfall cascaded down sylvan slopes, so pale, so distant he did not know if it was real or merely his imagination melding with the power of sight to produce a trick upon him. There there were no villages, no houses, no people …
Just sunlit forest and rock, and the living rough white water. Jealously, he looked back at the birds that fluttered about him searching for crumbs: these small creatures with their delicate ribs, their beating wings that scooped hearts light as snow through the clarity of air. His face bore a desperate, hunted look.

‘He is in another world,’ whispered the devotees reverently, while Sampath paid them no attention, just stared out over their heads, let them lift his foot and lay it upon their heads as they claimed his blessing. These days it turned his stomach, now that the whole business was not lighthearted any more, but mean and complicated.

He stared at the sky. The silvery evening air seemed to distil itself into the armour of the fish that steamed gently before him, into the powdery hair of the langurs sitting in his tree, still unaware, it seemed, of all the plotting and planning that was going on against them. There they were, chattering, playing, grooming each other as usual. Little did they know …

Trapped in his room, aunties and sisters keeping watch out of every window, the Hungry Hop boy paced up and down. From a distance, he could hear the noise of the protesters and demonstrators, and he felt it was unjust that he should not be allowed out to take part in the excitement.

‘I’ll take the van,’ he pleaded. ‘It will be such good business.’

But no, even this was not enough to shake his family’s conviction that he should be kept firmly locked up, allowed to emerge only if rooted in the honourable state of wedlock. In the matter of a few days’ time, the Hungry Hop boy had been demoted from a life of self-imposed imprisonment to one of family-enforced detainment and he felt as if his pride were being overlooked and insulted. He paced up and down his small room, wondering about Pinky’s fate in the midst of all the monkey trouble, about his own fate … Up and down. And whenever he stopped to listen, with an indignant ear pressed against the door, he could hear the babble of marriage negotiations rising up the stairs from the living room down below. Time was running out. They were resorting to the oldest trick in the book.

He smuggled an urgent note to Pinky via the faithful milkman, who delivered it when he returned home on the same bus Sampath had taken when he had first left Shahkot six months ago. ‘Very little time to lose,’ the note
read, a little runny from a leftover bit of buffalo milk in the canister where the milkman had placed it. ‘Marriage is in the works.’

As he waited for a reply, he paced the length of his room with greater and greater vigour. From time to time, he stopped and tossed back his hair, a thrill running through him like an electric current. Here was his life, just like in a scene from the movies. He felt grateful for the glamour; his heart hung suspended as if dangling from a mountain ledge.

By the next morning he had a response from Pinky who did not believe in delays. In a firm hand, she proposed they escape in the Hungry Hop van and drive far away, to a new town, a new place where they would not have to bother with his unreasonable family. That seemed the only available option. ‘On Monday, 30 April,’ read her practical note, ‘they are going to catch the monkeys. Everybody will be busy and paying no attention. Meet me under the big tamarind tree on the street leading to the orchard-bazaar road at 5.00 a.m. in the Kwality van, and from then on we will see.’

Monday, 30 April … that was only three days away! Seized by courage, Hungry Hop wrote back with a trembling hand: ‘Without fail I will be there.’

Although, once she received this note, Pinky was caught up in her own absorbing affairs of packing her belongings and getting ready to leave – all in secret, of course – she could not help feeling sorry for her brother. It did not seem quite fair, she thought, that just when her life was blossoming and flourishing, his should be cut down and curtailed. This she felt, even though her own feelings towards the monkeys were so different from his. Generous in these days of
love, she climbed up the ladder against his tree. ‘I have an idea,’ she said.

But Sampath, back to his old ways of barely speaking, merely looked blankly at her and said nothing at all in response.

‘You know,’ she continued, ‘perhaps you can come along with the Hungry Hop boy and myself, for, you know,’ she whispered loudly, ‘we are planning to elope, you know.’

Who knows why she had to put in so many ‘you know’s?

‘I am not going to climb down from this tree,’ said Sampath.

‘But why not?’ said Pinky, climbing back down the ladder hastily when she saw the Cinema Monkey approaching to sit in his accustomed place by Sampath on the cot. ‘We can go all over in the van and travel from one place to another.’

Sampath thought of endless roads in the endless sticky summer that would arrive so very soon to stretch before them, of trucks billowing out exhaust, the vibration of engines through his head, nausea rising from his stomach, and he felt unbearably hot and then cold as ice. He thought of his old life in the post office, of the people milling about him, pushing him, shoving him in the streets, and he felt as ill as when the officials had visited him. In fact, he almost lost his balance and fell from the tree. In the background a loudspeaker crackled and the words ran into a nonsensical blur. His face had gone white.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Pinky, alarmed.

‘Thank you for asking,’ he managed to say. ‘But it is better that you go on your own.’

‘Why is it better?’ Pinky demanded, exasperated.

‘Because it is,’ he said loudly and angrily, suddenly irritated by all of it and everybody. They would kill him. He
would just die. ‘Leave me alone, I am going to be sick. Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone …’

‘Oh, well,’ said Pinky, going away. He was very whiny today, wasn’t he? Who would have thought he would ever have had the enterprise to run away from home and into a tree? For a little while her brother had shown some character and now he was going backwards, as usual …

Little did she know of the events going on in the Hungry Hop household at that very moment, or she would not have been wasting her time talking to him in this fashion.

The day before Hungry Hop was to elope with Pinky, he was introduced to the girl his relatives had picked to be his future wife.

Though it is usually customary for the boy’s family to visit the girl’s, due to the unusual circumstances regarding Hungry Hop, his family arranged for things to be done the other way around instead. Before this chosen girl arrived, sandwiched fondly and closely between her parents in a rickshaw, Hungry Hop surpassed himself by throwing the biggest tantrum he had ever subjected his family to. They grew nervous at his fits of temper, the slamming of doors, his locking himself up, his emerging to shout something down the stairs, his locking himself up again …

‘But she is a very sweet girl,’ they pleaded. ‘Just take a quick look. She is pretty and good-tempered and you will like her.’ Really, his character had changed since he had been bitten by Pinky. Never did he used to lose his calm … They shook their heads over it all yet again.

‘If you like her so much,’ he said rudely, ‘marry her yourself and let her give you bother and trouble.’

‘But, son, just …’

‘You are eating my head,’ he interrupted, slamming another door.

But in the end, curiosity got the better of him and he went downstairs quietly enough when the girl arrived. He would look at her and then, with even a greater number of arguments to boost his point of view, he could, in all fairness, refuse her. He wore a white shirt and white trousers and, still a little thundery-looking about the eyes, he entered the room.

And …

Oh, but oh, who can plan against the powers of fate?

What a girl! What a girl he saw sitting demurely between an ugly Mummy-Papa when he stepped around the curtain hanging in the doorway of the room! She surpassed anything he could have ever expected. So plump, so pink and white! A complexion like that under the Indian sun! With such a sleepy face and sleepy eyes, such a good-natured sleepy smile … He could not believe his eyes! Her sari was rosebud-coloured, her cheeks were like vanilla pudding, her mouth like the rose on top of the icing of a birthday cake … Yes, he thought, she was exactly like a birthday cake, a pink and white birthday cake … The pearls in her ears and about her neck and wrists were like the little silver decoration balls. He opened his mouth and stared.

All about the room, his sisters and aunties, his grandmother and mother nudged each other. This girl had failed every examination she had ever taken, it was true, but there was something to her, wasn’t there? They were very pleased and proud with the good job they had done despite the difficult circumstances.

Hungry Hop retreated, his head in a whirl. When she left, his family closed in upon him, filling his ears with talk,
bribing him with promises of a Maruti car and television, a wedding party of two weeks in duration … Stop! he thought to himself. How can I do this? But they continued and a pleased look could not help but show through the grumpy one he tried hard to maintain.

When they left, all his doubts filed back into his brain and that night he did not sleep a wink. He tossed and turned until his sheet wound uncomfortably and tightly about his legs. His thoughts tumbled and jumped, interrupted each other and became entangled in themselves. On one hand, he had given his word he would meet Pinky the next morning and he was a nice boy, after all … On the other hand, just think of how easy and pleasant it would be if he stayed … But yet, he felt embarrassed to give in so easily after he had made such a fuss before his family and held out for so many days. He thought of Pinky and all her notes and presents, her biting his ear and hitting him on the jaw. It was true, Pinky had something to her too. Nobody could deny that. And just that morning, it had seemed so exciting – he would jump into the van and drive away. But now … he didn’t know … he didn’t know … There was the girl like ice cream, like birthday cake, like wedding cake … Oh, look, now he was saying wedding cake, not birthday cake, and that seemed heavy with peculiar significance … even though they would not have wedding cake at his wedding, of course, but laddoos.

At 4.00 a.m. he rose, his mind still not made up, and sneaked out to the van. Amazingly, as if by fate, nobody heard him – they were sleeping soundly, sure of work well done and a safe future for their son. They slept and snored as if resting after months of unease and worry. Quietly he pushed his van down the road and only when he turned the corner did he start the engine and get in. He would
drive to the tamarind tree and there, depending on how he felt, he would tell Pinky that this was impossible, or he would sweep her up and drive away in the Hungry Hop van … He took a maze of little side streets instead of the one-way main road so he might have plenty of opportunities to turn quickly around and return home, if that was the decision he made, or to move to the main road, if that was what he wanted. ‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake …’

Deliriously, he drove in circles through the shadowed streets, when, all of a sudden, he became aware of a huge grey group of people and cars coming up fast behind him and remembered with a start that this was the day they were to catch the monkeys. No doubt these were the monkey catchers themselves, on their way to the orchard just like him!

‘Get out of the way,’ they shouted at him. ‘Get out of the way.’

Urgently he tried to turn into another street, but it was very narrow and his van got stuck. Such things are wont to happen at crucial moments in one’s life, of course, and it took him quite a while to turn into yet another side lane, to embark upon yet another loop of his journey. ‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake …’ Or nobody, for that matter! Nobody! They were making his life a misery.

By 4.00 a.m. in the District Collector’s bungalow, the DC was awake and dressed so as to be ready when Mr Gupta arrived, which he did soon after, bundled in a copious number of woollen scarves and a cheerful yellow hat, knocking excitedly in staccato fashion on the door. Together, they were to go in the government jeep to the cantonment area. Here they would join the army, who would be armed with the nets, and together they would proceed to the orchard, where they would meet the police, who were to be on special alert for any disturbance that might interrupt these sensitive operations. Sampath would be brought down from the tree into police custody, the nets would be unloaded, the soldiers would get into the battle formation drawn up by the Brigadier and capture the monkeys. By the time the sun was properly in the sky, it would all be over.

But when, at 4.05 a.m., according to schedule, the DC and Mr Gupta were seated in the government jeep going down the driveway that led from the bungalow to the road, they had not proceeded more than a few yards when suddenly the driver braked. There, blocking the driveway, spread out all over, was a huge and motley collection of bundles and bed rolls, of broken chairs and tables, battered pots and pans galore, some dirty quilts and old pillows with stuffing coming out of them … Even an ancient rustyspring
bed and two skinny goats were visible in the predawn light! What was more, they could hear a dreadful banging and clanging, and a loud scraping coming from the servants’ quarters that stood just to the side of the driveway.

‘What on earth is going on there?’ said the DC as Mr Gupta leapt from the jeep to find out. The air was filled with the musty smell of mouldering objects that had clearly not been out in the open air for years.

Mr Gupta returned a minute later. ‘It is the cook – he is leaving for his ancestral home. He says he is not going to stay here to be insulted in his old age. I think, sir, it is all unfortunately about the cutlets. I told him: “Kindly move your belongings from the driveway immediately.” But he says he is too old to do anything quickly and as it is he does not care at all.’