Goats on the ground and monkeys above, are the major nuisance for our villagers. Goat rearing is very popular these days, for their ever growing demand in the ever growing Bhubaneswar. They roam around, munching with impunity whatever comes on their way, entering and destroying the kitchen gardens of the hapless village folks.
If goats are pain at the bottom, monkeys are pain from the top. They come in droves, eat and destroy all fruits, especially the prized cash crops like coconuts, papayas and betel nuts. All the methods to drive them away, yelling, beating HADI BAJA (drums beaten by men from a scheduled caste) and bursting fire crackers only succeeded temporarily.
Yet goats are far easier to handle, as they are dispenible, destined towards slaughterhouse. It's no monkey business to handle the monkeys. Being the descendants of Lord Hanuman, no one dares to earn the wrath of our "Monkey God". So someone came with the creative ideas to outsource the killing of the head of the clan of simians to a group of Muslim hunters. The later managed to track and kill the monkey chieftain.
The villages were spared from their the menace for a while. Within a few days they returned, not the monkeys but the hunters filled with remorse. The hunters have now become the hunted. They narrated that ever since they killed the monkey, misfortunes one after another have struck them. A bout of diarrhoea attack killed few from their community. Many of them, Butchers by profession lamented in Urdu laced Odia "LAXMI CHHAADGEIS" (Laxmi, the Godess of wealth has left us).
Since they beat the monkey to death their meat business had taken a severe beating. They were convinced that Lord Hanuman's wrath had been bestowed upon them with Laxmi following the suit, leaving them. It was amusing to hear the local Muslims scared to death of Hanuman and talking about the subsequent loss of Laxmi. No more Monkey business for them. Loss of life and business trumps over religion. Slowly the monkeys kept coming back. No one in our vilage or its surrounding ever wanted to repeat the fiasco. Never say Never again " Mere Monkeys".
If goats are pain at the bottom, monkeys are pain from the top. They come in droves, eat and destroy all fruits, especially the prized cash crops like coconuts, papayas and betel nuts. All the methods to drive them away, yelling, beating HADI BAJA (drums beaten by men from a scheduled caste) and bursting fire crackers only succeeded temporarily.
Yet goats are far easier to handle, as they are dispenible, destined towards slaughterhouse. It's no monkey business to handle the monkeys. Being the descendants of Lord Hanuman, no one dares to earn the wrath of our "Monkey God". So someone came with the creative ideas to outsource the killing of the head of the clan of simians to a group of Muslim hunters. The later managed to track and kill the monkey chieftain.
The villages were spared from their the menace for a while. Within a few days they returned, not the monkeys but the hunters filled with remorse. The hunters have now become the hunted. They narrated that ever since they killed the monkey, misfortunes one after another have struck them. A bout of diarrhoea attack killed few from their community. Many of them, Butchers by profession lamented in Urdu laced Odia "LAXMI CHHAADGEIS" (Laxmi, the Godess of wealth has left us).
Since they beat the monkey to death their meat business had taken a severe beating. They were convinced that Lord Hanuman's wrath had been bestowed upon them with Laxmi following the suit, leaving them. It was amusing to hear the local Muslims scared to death of Hanuman and talking about the subsequent loss of Laxmi. No more Monkey business for them. Loss of life and business trumps over religion. Slowly the monkeys kept coming back. No one in our vilage or its surrounding ever wanted to repeat the fiasco. Never say Never again " Mere Monkeys".
No comments:
Post a Comment