My Days Read Online Free Page B

thought that in some mysterious way we were getting various gains through the monkey. At which Grandmother lost her temper and said, “Why do you bother us? You may do what you like with that monkey, we don’t care.” But they were helpless, the monkey was agile and elusive and could not be captured. My uncle, on a Saturday, when he had no college, spent the whole day cajoling Rama to come back. When everything else failed, he placed some food in a dish on an open terrace and sat for hours under the cover of a large blanket. When Rama edged cautiously near the food, my uncle shot out his hand, but Rama jumped back and did not appear again for a whole week—which time he seemed to have camped in the vicinity of a girls’ school, snatching off whatever he noticed in a child’s hand.
    He had become notorious. The whole town was after him. I secretly prayed to all the gods I knew to protect him from his would-be captors. On someone’s advice my uncle secured half a bottle of toddy from the tavern nearby, soaked some nuts in it, and left it in a mud pan on the parapet wall. Surprisingly enough, it worked. Rama at his next visit was stirred by curiosity. He approached the mud pan, picked up the toddy-soaked nuts and stuffed them into his mouth, and then stooped down and licked off the toddy remaining in the pan. After this treat, when he tried to move back to the roof-top, he found his legs wobbling; his gait became unsteady and he collapsed, unable to proceed farther. My uncle, who had spent the whole day organizing this trap, picked up the monkey and put him back in chains in his cabin. A few days passed thus and I resumed my dialogue with him from the sand pile. He had tasted the freedom of the roof and was evidently longing for it again. Like the magician Houdini he had become an expert snapper of bonds. He had slipped through his waist-band and was gone one morning. I never saw him again. I did not know whether he had been destroyed by his enemies or gone in search of new pastures or got assimilated in a herd supposed to be camping in a mango garden nearby.
    Soon I had to adjust myself to the company of a mere peacock, who lacked the repose of a monkey (according to my notions), but was restless, always searching for insects and always wanting to be on the move, strutting along with his long tail (growing longer and heavier each day). He came up and sat faithfully at my side when I watched the street and tried to scare away our visitors. Soon he began to explore the outer space beyond Number One, Vellala Street. He would hop from our wall with an enormous flapping of his wings to the branch of a rain-tree in front of our door, and from there descend in a lump wherever he liked. He enjoyed his excursions and came back in the evenings by himself, or when one called out, “Myla!” he would answer back with his long shrill cry from somewhere. We left him alone, as the neighbouring houses got used to his presence, schoolchildren admired him and fed him with nuts, and he got along with everyone except when they tried to pluck a feather from his tail. After I became a school-goer, I looked for him here and there while returning home and brought him back with me. He had begun to enlarge the area of his operations, and once he perched himself on the compound wall of our school—but when I noticed him there, with boys shouting around him, I let him be, never identifying myself with him, not being certain how our teachers would view it. Sometimes he would wander off in the other direction up to the toddy tavern, where happy drunkards gave him spiced nuts, which they generally munched while sitting around imbibing their drinks. Myla was always led back home by someone or other known to us. But one day two rickshaw pullers brought his carcass home and threw it in our garden.
    â€œSomeone seems to have broken his neck,” they said. He lay lifeless in the mud, with his broomlike tail stretching