Monkey business

She sat in the Starbucks café, sipping coffee and staring out of the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf. Her hand shook, spilling coffee into her saucer, where it lay in a dark, foreboding pool.

A fair skinned, pudgy and manicured hand held her hand. Mrs. Banerjee, Onu, her neighbor. Neha  was grateful  Onu was silent , for once. The incredible and shocking events of the day had stunned her into unusual silence. Her round, kohl-lined eyes had grown larger and rounder, brimming over with unspoken questions.

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She had this premonition of something going hideously wrong, from the moment Saurav’s deputation signal had arrived. He , a newly posted Army Captain to this remote” junglee-posting”(That’s what Neha’s mother had derogatorily called it as), had to pack his bags and move to Congo, as a part of UN Peacekeeping efforts in the African Nation. Neha had begged with him to take her along, but it was a “non-family” deputation. In retaliation, Neha dug her heels and stay put in the crumbling, ancient and sprawling bungalow, a heirloom bequeathed by the space-loving, erstwhile British residents of Jimaguri.

“The very name sounds like a disease, that you could catch by a mosquito bite.” Her younger sister’s wisdom, shared on iphone.

To pass her time, Neha the newlywed Army wife, took to decorating her house, which was enormous, dilapidated, and vexed her to no end. “It eej “bhootiya, if you ask me.”Her closest neighbor, Mrs. Anupama Banerjee, alias “Onu”, would confide in her. Discretion in speech was not one of Onu’s virtues and she had made many such pronouncements, like how foreign deputees were made to undergo HIV tests for they lived “such a sexy life” in phoren lands. This last remark had made Neha squirm, and gave her sleepless nights. Still, she was good –natured, and called on to look her up often. Besides, she was the only neighbor within five km radius, she too lived in a “Bhootiya” crumbling bungalow, and her husband was a surgeon in the Army Hospital.

In this lone some existence, two things buoyed her up. A chance meeting, with the CO’s wife.She decided to teach her oil-painting, and her sudden interest in growing a garden, with help from her watchman cum gardener,”Bahadur”.

So, now, Neha’s life was full of thinking of subjects to paint, fetching supplies from the city , which lay 35kms away, and scheming with Bahadur on how to drape the broken backyard fence with vines of ‘kaddu, lauki and tori.”Monkeys , in the cantonment , were a plague. Amazingly, Bahadur had an”Unbahadur-like “attitude, so far as monkeys were concerned. Whenever a troop descended, he would, shivering, lock himself up in his small wooden guardroom at the gate, leaving Neha to vent her rage at her vandalized roses, broken flowerpots and shredded lauki vines, beating the ground with her broken canvas stand legs, screaming obscenities in a futile rage, while Bahadur watched from the peephole.

The monkeys, of course, were unfazed. Occasionally, they would snarl at her, and pretend to give a chase, and she had to flee to the safety indoors.

Saurav would caution her on phone, ‘they are primates and intelligent, do not attempt to harm them. They remember.” Humph! Easy for him to say!! Here, she had to just watch helplessly as they chomped up all her painstakingly grown geraniums.

“I too am a primate. They should remember that.” She would retort, Saurav would laugh, and she would slam the transcontinental call down, immediately regretting afterwards.

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That day dawned gray. Bahadur overslept, probably sleeping off his last night’s toddy. Neha had a bad headache, and it looked like it might rain any moment. The bamboo fences around the front and back lawns were still broken from last week’s monkey raid, Neha noted with dismay.

The paints were due to arrive today, at the store in the city mall, and the needle in the fuel gauge of her SUV veered dangerously close to E. This was bad news in Jimaguri. Petrol meant more than fuel. It meant freedom, accessibility and life.

The maid had come and gone and the house still smelt musty and old. No amount of Lizol, Neha thought lady-Macbeth-like, would sweeten this home. Sigh.

By noon, Bahadur deigned to wake up, and was seen pottering amongst the broken flowerpots, when Neha shouted instructions, from the driveway, of sweeping the lawns, and tying up various vines in her “laukassic-park” (Onu’s jibe)in the backyard. It was a miracle . Bahadur even heard her, for he was so engrossed, raking up fallen mangoes from the numerous trees and making small mountains of the now messy and squelchy treats, to be cleared later. Strange! neha had never seen him do that before. He would just plonk them into the large dustbin by the shovel-fuls. Now , it will attract wasps and flies, and of course, monkeys. "Oi!" Neha screamed ," Bahadur , use your brains, don't do that, just phek do unko!" Heads down, Bahadur smiled, a sly smile , that said, "I am using my brains , Madam."

“Funny creepy fellow! Never looks me in the eye. Always stares at the ground, even when I talk to him. And what was that smirk for?The brainless bufoon!.”Neha talked to herself as she revved up and reversed, disappearing in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

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It was close to six, and darkness was already descending on this small cantonment town. Not to mention the downpour, which had, left wisps of moisture, free gray clouds and shin deep puddles everywhere.

There was a black-out. Only oil lamps flickered in sundry hut windows as Neha raced back, spraying muck at startled sepoys.

Nothing prepared Neha for the sight that greeted her, when she turned into her rusty iron gates, four hours and a huge downpour later.

Millions of furry shapes filled her garden, squeaking, hissing, and chattering. At first, she thought, she was dreaming. It looked like a scene from “Planet of the Apes”. They occupied every post on her broken bamboo fence; they swayed from the leafy boughs of mango trees like Tarzan. The driveway was littered with mango peel and stones. The mounds of mangoes had all but disappeared. Bahadur was nowhere to be seen. "The cowardly swine!! I told him not to leave the fruit out."  Neha thought angrily.

As Neha peered through the post rain mist, two things happened simultaneously. Neha skidded on a wet patch, or a squelched mango, on her concrete driveway, and heard a thud and a sickening crunch.

A furry thing fell off the hood. She had hit a monkey. Omigod! Probably, crushed it.

There was a long moment of utter silence. No one chattered, swung or squeaked. Hundreds of pairs of primate eyes swiveled in her direction.

Then all hell broke loose. Every furry limb made towards the SUV. Snarling, chattering ,and leaping.

She had to run. A large, new, canvas lay at her feet. Using it as a shield, she opened the driver side door, and sprinted towards the back door of the house. The front was already swamped.

Panting, heart in mouth, she ran, with all her might. The chattering seemed to be closing in.

The wire mesh door to the kitchen was latched, but the balcony door wasn’t. Leaping in, she made for the first light that she saw. The skylight, through, the kitchen roof.

The house was eerily dark and silent. Suddenly, a large rustle and thump was heard in the backyard. The monkeys!! Neha bolted herself into the kitchen. A large kitchen knife lay in the third drawer. She grabbed it by the handle, and took huge gulps of air.

Almost immediately, she heard a rustle, a looming of a large dark shape from the corner of the kitchen. Every nerve on edge, Neha reacted instinctively. Screaming, she held her hands taut as the thing leapt on her. The knife sank till the hilt, with no resistance. She heard a startled gasp. A human gasp. A breath that smelt of toddy and paan-masala.Her hands felt clothing, and buttons as the shape sank at her feet,with a sigh, a dark sticky fluid making a growing pool around her  shoes. The lights came on, that very instant, and she saw lying at her feet, with life oozing out of him, Bahadur.

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Now, She was waiting at Starbucks. In a few minutes, police will come to record her statement.