The DC looked at them amazed. How could they laugh? Just after they’d been shouting such angry threats …
Certainly, he reflected, he had come to a very unusual place. But this plan was inadmissible. His supervisor would be sure to hear of it and then, if there were any casualties … He must be firm about putting his foot down. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ he said to the Brigadier, ‘this does not appear to be the most prudent of possibilities …’
Later in the morning they met with the CMO, who was accompanied by a crowd of angry businessmen and shopkeepers who had spent all night chanting slogans outside his bungalow. Gasping and pale, he dashed from the car to the DC’s office under the guard of the police superintendent, who had been forced into duty yet again.
‘We have received protests from all the shopkeepers, sir,’ said Mr Gupta, giving the DC a quick briefing. ‘They refuse to have their liquor licences revoked, and also we have received threats from all the surrounding towns saying if we revoke the licences, the monkeys will simply shift their focus and carry on being a nuisance in their vicinity. And they are right, sir, these monkeys might even teach their tricks to the local monkey populations in other towns if they are thrown out of this one. And then we will have a whole state of drunken monkeys. You yourself are familiar with the adage “One bad apple spoils the others.” In this case we might say, “One bad monkey spoils the others.”’
‘But, sir,’ shouted someone in the listening crowd, inspired by Mr Gupta’s little witticism, ‘can you really teach an old monkey new tricks?’
‘Arreji,’ said someone else, ‘we will have enough problems with the young monkeys, whether the old ones are learning anything or not.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Gupta, ‘this would be a case of “Stick your head out in wartime and be hit on the head.’” He was enjoying showing off some of the lines he had learned from the Monkey Baba, especially since he had spotted Miss Jyotsna’s admiring face in the midst of the crowd. In fact, he was amazed at how he could say these things and somehow, without him having to think, they meant exactly what he meant. He imagined being alone with Miss Jyotsna on a moonlit night. ‘To make cream, you must churn the milk.’
Despite himself, the DC had begun to giggle. He felt surprisingly free. ‘I do not know,’ he said to the CMO, ‘if this revoking of liquor licences would be the best idea …
The CMO was dismayed at how his plan was being greeted. ‘Since this is the response I have been given,’ he said in a dignified and injured tone, ‘I might as well go home. I have another meeting to attend.’
‘Is this the meeting with Vermaji, the scientist?’ asked Mr Gupta with interest, and on hearing that it was, he turned to his boss. ‘We had better join in, sir. He too has a proposal, if you recall, to get rid of the monkeys. If the CMO passes it, it will be presented to you.’ He was loath to give up the fun and allow it to carry on somewhere else without him.
And so the three of them and their entourage of protesters travelled to the office of the Chief Medical Officer. On the way, the crowds gathered up their strength, even though they had been standing for quite a while now, and began to noisily shout their slogans. ‘Dab your mouth with honey and you will get plenty of flies,’ they shouted. ‘Sweep before your own door. Your answers are beside the question. Many a pickle makes a mickle. Every bean has its black. Gather thistles and expect pickles? Show a clean set of teeth.’
‘Do you hear them?’ asked the DC, puzzled, his thoughts side-tracked. ‘Many a pickle makes a mickle … what is a mickle? Guptaji, this town is full of adages I have never heard before.’
‘When the buffaloes fight, the crops suffer,’ the crowd continued. ‘It is a hard winter when dogs eat dogs. Every cock fights best on his own dunghill. Puff not against the wind. Talk of chalk and hear about cheese!’
‘Talk of chalk … and hear about cheese? Very odd. Where does this cheese come from?’ The DC found himself most interested. He wished he could have stopped to ask them the meaning of all they were saying. ‘Hear about cheese …’
While awaiting their arrival, Vermaji was sampling the tumbler of onion juice he had found sitting on the office desk in front of him, thinking, at first glance, that it was lemon squash. He took a gulp and immediately ran to the window to spit it out. He emptied the rest of the tumbler into the dry flowerbed.
‘Terrible juice,’ he said, making a face at the CMO when he entered. ‘Why don’t you drink orange instead?’ he asked. ‘Or pineapple?’
The temple people hammered on the door.
What a rude man, thought the officer, looking at the empty glass. First he had drunk all his onion juice and then, after that, he had had the audacity to criticize it. Why had he drunk it in the first place? Immediately he decided he was not going to approve Verma’s plan. It was an absurd plan and why should he pass it when his own had been dismissed so readily? Nobody was considerate of him and he would not be considerate of Verma.
‘Absolutely not,’ he said.
‘Why, what is wrong with pineapple juice? It’s very nice juice,’ said Verma, perplexed.
‘I mean your plan,’ shouted the CMO angrily. (Oh, and now he would get another stress-induced ulcer, he thought, in an immediate terrified aside.)
‘But it is the one simple plan,’ Verma pleaded, ‘the one logical and scientific approach to what is after all a scientific problem of langur and human interaction, of alcohol addiction in monkeys — why can’t it be approved?’
‘It’s a silly plan, that’s why,’ said Mr Gupta, although it was not his place to say anything. ‘It will cause all sorts of bad smells and unsanitary conditions and that too in a holy place. And, no doubt, our fly problem would get worse.’
‘We must categorically refuse your request,’ said the CMO.
‘Yes,’ said the DC, who was still thinking of the adages.
But when at the end of the day they realized they had come up with no workable plan, they drove home somewhat subdued.
The police superintendent brought the DC the news that the monkeys had been on another expedition and raided the cupboards of the retired District Judge. They had taken five bottles of whisky and bounded away before the servants had even realized what had happened.
The DC went back to his bungalow and sat down worriedly. There he had been, laughing in a way he did only with his one close friend — miraculously his shyness had somewhat disappeared that day — but the problem had not been solved. He must not forget his responsibilities. He mulled things over, but could not think of anything that would raise his spirits. When the cook served his dinner, for it was already quite late in the evening, he was even further discouraged; he saw, with a sinking feeling of his heart, that his meal consisted of burnt-looking cutlets upon one of the grubbiest plates he had ever seen. Just where a pattern of flowers or, say, stripes should have been, the platter was stamped about with dirty fingerprints. The cook put it down before him with an unceremonious thump, then, without looking at the DC, turned and left.
Government officials did not know how to eat properly any more. The cook felt full of bitterness. And unable to make cutlets the first night, he had been struck with an unshakeable determination to make cutlets the second night. He made cutlets with a vengeance, a whole pile of them, and what insipid tasteless things they were — the DC was forced to bring out his mother’s pickle to add a bit of flavour to his meal. He felt as miserable as ever.
Miserable as ever, and alone, sitting there by himself at one end of the huge dining table. A bare bulb dangled from a wire above him and cast a dim light upon the table, while the rest of the room disappeared into darkness around him. The windows were black, gaping holes to his right and left. Sad, dirty curtains hung limply at their sides. He got up, drew the grey fabric together and sat back down to his cutlets. Oh, how would he be able to finish the awful, charred things?