Commuting Monkeys

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.