When you wake up to find yourself face to face with a monkey, there’s no room for anything in your mind other than pure shock, and the only thing you can think of is to chase it away and escape without being bitten or scratched. It happened to me the other day, when I woke up to find a huge monkey peering in at me through my open balcony door. I had left it open so that the breeze would lessen the stifling heat of a surprisingly sultry Bangalore night, but rather than welcoming some cool air, all the open door did was issue an invitation to a big, fat monkey to admire a sleeping beauty.
Needless to say, I became a screaming beast after the reality of what I was seeing reached my half-awake brain. The monkey vanished from sight on hearing me yell, and I ran to bolt the balcony door with a sigh of relief. As I stood there, I heard a noise from the kitchen that raised the beating of my heart to thunderous proportions, and with a sinking feeling realized that the door leading to the other balcony from the kitchen was also open, and that the monkey was now inside the house. When I peered around the corner into the kitchen, it was at the dustbin, looking for leftovers to eat. No amount of shooing and banging doors budged him from giving his entire attention to scrounging for something to eat.
Things got worse when he turned his beady eyes to where I was, and disdainfully bounded into the living room, and straight on to the corner table which must have looked very appealing to him with all the shiny knickknacks like keys and mobiles scattered on it. As I watched with wary eyes from my post inside the room, half head out and the rest of me safely behind the door, he picked up the very thing I didn’t want him to notice – a shiny packaged box that contained in it one very, very expensive Swatch watch. It was meant to be a gift for a dignitary who was supposed to visit our office the next day, and now, it had become a toy for this self-crowned king of my home who was examining it carefully with his chubby paws. I prayed fervently that the monkey wouldn’t end up making a monkey out of me at office – how could I go in and explain that a monkey had made off with the watch? It sounded suspicious even to my ears, much like stories of dogs eating one’s homework.
And to my horror of horrors, the thing I wanted most and the thing I dreaded most, happened simultaneously – the monkey scampered outside the room and to the balcony just as I had been praying it would, but it carried away more than ten grand worth of goods that didn’t even belong to me. I ran to the kitchen with my heart in my mouth, and to my immense relief, saw the package abandoned near the dustbin. I rushed to get the door closed and bolted, and a few days after that, monkey-proofed the grill on the balcony with GI wire to ensure that I would never have to wake up to simian intruders again.
But I did wake up to many more monkeys, all of them monkeys on my back. They’re the ones that sneak in through the doors of doubt that you leave open in your mind; they stare you in the face as soon as you open your eyes each morning, and remind you of the burdens you must bear every day. They induce a deep fear in you, fear that you will be scarred and hurt by your cares and worries. They run when you shout at them to go away, yet they worm their way in through the other doors you’ve left open – low confidence, fear of change, and wanting to please others all the time.
They feed off the garbage in your mind, heart and soul, and they look for everything that’s shiny and new and nice inside you and in your world, so that they can make off with it. And if you don’t step out from your hiding place behind the walls of fear and mistrust, you could end up losing all that’s good in your life. Unless you’re extremely lucky that is, and the monkey drops off your back, and also drops off the hopes and dreams it’s about to carry away, into your being.
I guess the need of the hour is to monkey-proof myself, so that any monkey that thinks of climbing on my back and being a millstone around my neck, faces an extremely slippery challenge posed by my confidence in my capabilities, my never-say-die attitude, my heartfelt hope that every tomorrow dawns bright and sunny, my optimism that life can only get better, the unquestionable love and support I receive from my family and friends, and my unwavering faith in God.
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