Monday, July 14, 2008

A Tale of Two Monkeys

I don't know what's with monkeys and me these days. They seem to be displaying this special affinity towards me all of a sudden. Two incidents within a span of two weeks is a bit too much for me to take.

A couple of weeks back, I had invited a few colleagues for dinner at my place. While N and I were cooking in the kitchen, I suddenly saw a monkey standing right at the door of the kitchen. We were trapped in the kitchen, with no exit route. With no prior experience at handling monkeys, I was completely psyched off. N, on the other hand, had encountered monkeys entering his office and trying to steal things. He started making some loud sounds with a pan and ladle, and managed to drive the monkey off. On the way out, the monkey managed to spoil the cucumber that we had grated for raita, and made a mess in the entire dining room.

Last week, while we were on vacation in Bali, we visited the Uluwatu temple. The temple is very beautiful, on top of a cliff right next to the ocean. There were tons of monkeys around there. We were quite careful to secure our belongings. However, the monkeys were smarter than us. Just as my attention got diverted while watching one of the tourists feed some nuts to a monkey, another monkey sneaked up behind me and snatched off my eye-glasses. Thankfully it did not scratch my eyes or face. The bananas and nuts that we offered to the monkey were not enough for it to give the glasses back to us. It just ran off down the cliff into the trees. I was left vision-less for the rest of the day, and am down to wearing contact lenses for a week now.

The positive side of the whole thing is that now I am all set for the next monkey onslaught!

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Pradnya, saw your blog link at Orkut, and started reading the posts. Well, my childhood town of Durgapur was known for its monkeys, as Durgapur was initially a jungle and habitat for monkeys. Normally they used to roam on the roofs of the township employee quarters, feasting on guavas, papayas, corn, grown in the kitchen gardens of the households. One day after reaching home, I found that my favorite mirror in the house is missing. Mother narrated the scenario as follows: The monkeys came, and one adventurous one decided to enter our house (unfortunately mother forgot to close one of the doors after the monkeys arrived). That guy then was able to spot the mirror, saw its face, got scared/happy, and then took it. Later, that day, we found the frame with broken glasses in our neighbors garden. Guess, after seeing his/her face, that guy didn't like the monkey face :-).

Tuesday, August 26, 2008 8:57:00 AM  

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