A Tale of 2½ monkeys.....
A weekend morning in Shimla and I wake up feeling fresh all ready to welcome a new day. I had heard a lot about Jakhoo temple and I felt good that I would get to visit it.Little did I know that my day would start with a feud.....Feud between me a Homo Sapien and a herd of Rhesus Macaque.
While many grey cells strongly contradict "ape to human evolution" theory by Darwin, my experience that day in Jakhoo with a troop of so-called intelligent monkeys made me reconfirm that human did evolve from ape.As soon as I started to climb up the stairs to Jakoo, I was strongly reminded of my driver and hotel staff who had warned me in advance about the hospitality aka hostility of the monkeys in Jakhoo. As per the instructions,I had not taken any prasad to offer to the deity in the fear that monkeys would attack me for the prasad. But neither did I heed to the foreboding completely cos I had forgotten to carry a stick which was available at the temple gate and which was the main protecting device from the monkeys.The seed of fear which had already germinated in me now turned into a sapling when I heard the constant chatter of them and their jumping on the tin roofing on the way to the temple. OOOhhh.....M a brave gal.....I kept reminding myself and went ahead to see the mighty deity of Hanuman (Monkey Lord as described by Wikipedia) overlooking Shimla. I felt like a tiny speck of dust standing in front of the statue and honestly did not reach even the height of his mace at full stretch. After admiring the panoramic view from the highest point of Shimla, I proceeded towards the temple and was mobbed by the unruly gang of monkeys who were busy threatening the bunch of tourists exploring the beauty of the place.
Somehow averting the mobbing monkeys, I made my way to the place where I had to take off my shoes before heading to the temple premises.A minor assault took place therein where a young monkey tried to scare me off my wits by staring at me and threatening to take my shoe.My co visitors scared it off with sticks thankfully and I could peacefully remove my shoes and get ready for visiting the sanctum sanctorum of the Jakhoo Temple.
My favourite latest buy of pink shades were on and just before entering the inner premises of the temple, I placed it on the crown of my head. After offering my prayers in the temple, I came out to the open and decided to stroll around the temple at leisure.That decision was the forerunner in my believing the Darwin Theory of Evolution. As soon as I started taking the first few steps in the awesome weather, someone stroked me on the head from behind and before I could turn my head in a split second, I heard the clatter of the group of visitors and primates shouting at each other.Little did I realise that I was one of the main causes behind the pandemonium that had just erupted.My pink shades were by that time in the hands of the mom monkey who gritted her teeth when I stared at her in utter shock. The baby monkey clinging onto her seemed amused at all this and made sum gestures with its hands which irritated me to the upper limit possible.The visitors to the temple seemed to be bothered at the eruption of sudden drama but were clueless about the solution to the problem.
The old lady selling 'bhog' or offering to the God came out to help with her strategical business acumen.She asked my friend accompanying me to throw the envelops which were supposed to be containing offerings towards the monkeys. I could not gather my wits at what was happening and took the stick of that old lady and tried to scare the primates. Darwin's theory could be best explained by an onlooker if I was caught jumping and clattering gibberish in my reaction to the action that had just happened.My friend threw the first envelop towards a wrong pair of mother and baby monkey while the culprit duo was enjoying the scene and getting a bird eye view perched from the highest branch of tree. The more hyper I got, the more fun I was infusing in them;I did realise a few minutes later.
The impish baby monkey teased me with the temple tips of my favourite shades in his mouth and to my utter dissatisfaction, it was leisurely chewing on it.Such was my wrath that I turned around and started searching for some thing to throw at those horrendous creatures.By that time, the old lady handed over another so called bait to my friend...the envelope.As soon as my friend threw it towards the culprit 1½ monkeys, a serendipitous thing happened.The mom monkey in order to grasp the envelope threw the shades from the tree top and my friend collected it in due time to evade the entire platoon of those primates to snatch my fav shades another time.
Lo and behold...My pink shades were in front of my eyes...I washed them and put it in my pockets and avoiding the animated troop of primates somehow, I made my car to my cab.Mouthful of curses fell short of the trauma I had just experienced and I felt literally angry when my driver said that 'Hanuman ke Mandir me bandar to hongei na'!!!
As much as I believe in Hanuman, I will never forget that episode which made me realise that Darwin was right...Human must have evolved from apes...!!!
Jakhoo ke dakoo was one of the apt title for this blog but the tale of 2½ monkeys encompasses it all...I surely contribute to that 2½...
