Monkeys

Monkeys, brought into the slum by a troupe of itinerant performers before the monsoon, become both part of its improvised refuge and a source of disorder within it. Their escape of three Cobras provokes a nighttime stampede; their talent for stealing then tests a neighborhood built on trust and open doors. The bell rule introduced to curb their thefts turns that conflict into a comic contest of ingenuity between the animals and the people responsible for them.

Arrival in the Slum

In the days before the big rain, the slum sheltered itinerant entertainers and their animals. The monkey handlers were among those who sought safety there, alongside snake charmers, bird breeders, horse owners from the ground near Navy Nagar, and people bringing livestock. The overcrowded settlement had become, in the narrator’s description, a kind of ark: animals as varied as goats, pigs, water buffalo, a camel, and an elephant were given refuge from the coming floods. The Monkeys thus arrived within a larger act of shared shelter, rather than as isolated curiosities or visitors to a settled, orderly space.

That welcome did not mean their presence was without consequences. The animals were accepted, and no one questioned their right to shelter, but the crowded slum had to absorb the practical problems they brought with them. The Monkeys’ two principal disturbances make that tension concrete: first, one gets loose and opens a basket containing three Cobras; later, the animals’ habitual pilfering confronts the settlement’s rule against stealing. In both cases, the community must find a way to keep its welcome from becoming disorder.

The Escaped Monkeys and Cobras

On the first night of the handlers’ stay, one of the Monkeys escaped while the residents were asleep. It scampered across the roofs of several huts, then lowered itself into the hut used by a group of snake charmers. The Cobras were kept in covered wicker baskets, each secured with a bamboo slip-catch and a stone placed on top. The animal removed one of the stones and opened a basket containing three snakes. From a safe position on the hut’s roof, it shrieked until the snake charmers woke and raised the alarm.

The cry that snakes were coming sent sleepy residents rushing through the slum with kerosene lanterns and flaming torches. In the confusion, people struck at shadows and beat one another on the feet and shins with sticks and poles; some of the flimsier huts were knocked over in the stampede. The episode shows how a single escaped animal could turn a tightly packed refuge into a dangerous crowd. Qasim Ali eventually restored order, organized the snake charmers into two search parties, and had them comb the settlement systematically. They found the Cobras and returned them to their basket, bringing the immediate danger to an end.

Theft and the Bell Rule

The Monkeys’ mischief did not stop with the escape. They had been trained as thieves, and the slum’s lack of locks or secret hiding places made it especially easy for them to pilfer. The neighborhood was a stealing-free zone, so the handlers could not simply treat the losses as an unavoidable nuisance. Each day, the embarrassed men set up a table outside their hut displaying the stolen goods, where their rightful owners could reclaim them.

The Monkeys showed a particular preference for the glass bangles and brass anklets or bracelets worn by the little girls. Their handlers bought them baubles of their own and decorated their hairy arms and legs with them, but even this supply did not displace the attraction of taking the residents’ jewelry. The detail makes the thefts more than random pilfering: the animals repeatedly chose familiar adornments that belonged to people living alongside them, while the handlers’ attempted substitute failed to resolve the problem.

Qasim Ali’s response was to have noisy bells put on every Monkey while the animals remained in the slum. The Monkeys, however, proved inventive in removing the bells or muffling them. At dusk, the narrator once saw two moving together down the deserted lane outside the hut. One had taken off its own bell; walking on its hind legs beside its companion, it held that animal’s bells in both tiny hands to silence them. The small scene turns the practical rule into a contest: the bells made the Monkeys’ usually noiseless capering easier to detect, but the animals kept finding ways around the measure. Their thefts and the handlers’ embarrassment diminished, though the account does not suggest that the rule made the Monkeys obedient.

A Comic Test of Shared Order

The Monkeys’ place in the episode rests on a contrast between welcome and regulation. The settlement accepted itinerants and animals as the floods approached, but that hospitality required residents to respond when an animal endangered people or violated a shared norm. The escaped Monkey creates immediate physical danger by releasing three Cobras; the thefts present a slower, recurring challenge to the slum’s no-stealing rule. In each instance, Qasim Ali’s response is practical and collective: search parties recover the snakes, while bells make theft more detectable.

The account also gives the Monkeys a vivid resourcefulness that complicates any simple picture of them as a nuisance. They are trained by people, sheltered with the other animals, and repeatedly involved in disruptions that their handlers must answer for; yet they are not easily controlled by those handlers. The Monkey that frees the Cobras and the pair that evade the bells turn communal safeguards into the occasion for further mischief. Their brief presence therefore gives the slum’s fragile order a comic but concrete test: its open doors and shared refuge endure, but only through continuing efforts to manage the consequences of living so closely together.