Poem: “The Monkey Within”
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Let your inner monkey out today! 🐒
Good morning fellow apes! 🐒
If you believe in Darwin, then monkeys are not only our closest relatives (we share approximately 98% of our DNA with those little guys), but by looking into their wonderful eyes, we directly face our evolutionary past. I sometimes wish, it would have stopped there… Without humans, Mama Earth would be in better shape today. 🙈
To us foreigners in India, monkeys have always been fascinating.
In Germany, of course, there aren’t any, and I fondly remember my first experiences in New Delhi with a wild bunch of of them. At that time, I lived in Hauz Khas Village, prime location in the ‘Kingdom of South Delhi’, in a lovely flat with direct view of the old monuments and the lake. Many monkeys would jump around in the park, and every morning, they amused themselves by stealing the building’s newspapers. The delivery man would roll them together and threw the bundle - often with a rather high hit-and-miss-rate - onto the respective balcony. For the monkeys, it was their version of “Fetch”! 😅
From time to time, an older male monkey would walk confidently into my kitchen, open the fridge, and steal some left-overs. Despite my maid and landlord loosing their plot and telling me to shoo him away, I felt like David Attenborough, and secretly hoped the monkey, whom I lovingly started to call “Jimmy Jim”, would come back the next day. 🤗 #whitepeopleinIndia
The view from my balcony in Hauz Khas Village, Delhi (2013/14).
India has a special relationship with monkeys.
At last count, there were approximately 50 million monkeys in India, and the country shares a historical relationship with the animal ranging from religious devotion (each monkey carries a bit of Hanuman, the Monkey God in him or her), to being a political scapegoat (politicians regularly blame monkeys to have stolen important documents or files, as in the curious case of the Home Ministry in 2011). And who remembers the stories of the Kala Bander that kept Delhi on its toes for years? 😱
Even though monkeys are protected under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, unfortunately one can witness much cruelty and exploitation. Until today, you find so-called ‘monkey charmers’ on the roads, forcing the animal to perform with the help of tight leashes and the occasional kick, just to make them do a few sad tricks for money. In most cases, the monkey has its teeth broken, so it can’t bite back. It is one of the many countless crimes against animals, and it makes me sick to even think of it. 😢
The most common monkey in Goa is the ‘Hanuman Langur’. Source: Wikimedia
In Goa, however, monkeys have a comparatively good life.
Most Goans might not be happy about wild hordes of monkeys jumping around on their roof, breaking tiles and stealing mangoes, but they are part of daily life as much as fish curry and feni. The most common monkey in Goa is the ‘Hannuman Langur’, and almost every day, I have a family of them hanging out in the Jackfruit tree near my office.
It seems that none of my old fasciation has waned. I can by now roughly tell who is who, and if a youngster curiously peeps from a safe distance into the room, I keep very still to not scare it off. Inspired by these daily rendezvous, I wrote a little poem about the monkey that lives in all of us. Enjoy! 😊
The Monkey Within
by Isabelle-Jasmin Roth
A monkey lived quite happily,
In a city’s little wood.
His favorite place was an apple tree,
Where he always ate more than he should.
His belly full and round like a ball,
He slept the entire afternoon.
But when he woke up – and all was the same! -
He thought “Life has to change very soon”.
That’s when the monkey said to himself,
“I shall explore many things more!”
A friend has told him the other day,
That there is a singing tree door.
From now on, he could not sleep at night,
Excited and scared all in one,
How could he find the entry to it?
When will his time for adventures come?
In the early hours of the next day,
When the sun was about to beam,
The monkey finally closed his eyes,
Falling into a deep dream.
“Hey monkey, here I am, don’t you see?”
A voice sings in his ear,
His eyes opened wide in a pitch dark night,
“Look left, look right, look here!”
The monkey jumps and looks and stares,
And tries to come closer and near,
But every time he thinks he has reached,
The voice does again disappear.
The monkey tried his luck for some time,
And gave up frustrated and sad,
Big tears running down his hairy cheeks,
That’s the worst dream he ever had!
If the monkey just would know one thing,
Which he thinks is so far away.
The voice that sings sits right in him,
And if he would listen, it could change his day. 💖
With love from Goa,
Isabelle 🌿
