Once during
1968, when I was travelling by train in a remote part of Kerala-Karnataka
border, I found myself in a sleeping compartment with a door to the platform on
each side but no connection with the corridor. Although I had been warned never
to open the wire mosquito nets on the windows, I almost strangled from the
airless compartment and, once night fell, I threw the warning to the winds.
Before dawn
I awoke and realized that I was not alone in my compartment. Clearly a hobo had
jumped aboard while I slept and judging from the curious noises coming from
other three berths, there might be more hobos aboard.
Gradually
the sunlight came in, and to my horror I saw that my compartment was full of
large fearsome monkeys. One of them was munching on my shoe laces; another was
ripping a shirt on the hanger into strips. It was terrifying. Big monkeys are
savage and can rip human flesh apart in a matter of minutes. I lay still. After
about ten minutes the train slowed down and, before the carriage stopped, the
monkeys leapt through the window and dropped to the ground. I watched them
pound uphill towards an oil-palm plantation.
I dressed
quickly and met the station master on the platform. “Why did the monkeys get
off here?” I asked him.
“You see,
sir,” he explained, “they come every morning on this train to eat oil-palm nuts
on this plantation. Then they eat and sleep but wake to catch the six o’clock
train back home.
Sir, during my journey through this area in in last June, I found large no. of houses having slopy roof covered with Mangalore tiles. I was surprise to see no monkeys in such a dense forest covered area. I realise that their presence would not have allowed a single tile piece in place. Even I asked a fellow passeger about the fixing of these tiles. He confirmed that these are just placed without any mortar.
ReplyDeleteI think things have changed and like humans they might have migrated for greener pasture.
Terrifying..but entertaining Sir😄
ReplyDelete