An Encounter with the Monkey

            Childhood is age of craziness. It’s of no doubt that not even one would have stopped himself/herself from doing at least one crazy or stupid thing. This post is one such stupid or crazy thing which I did that finally ended me at a hospital.

             This incident occurred when I was in my kinder garden class at Chinmaya Vidhyalaya, Coimbatore. Usually I had my class getting ended up by afternoon itself, reaching home I used to have a great meal and sleep happily (A care free age with just enjoyment round the clock). Getting up by 6pm and not having a burden of home works to be done I used to finish it soon and get ready for the Temple, a regular habit then. I and my mom visiting the temple would pay a visit to my grandparent’s home (Mom’s Parents) which was in the same locality too. During weekends I used to be full time at my grandparent’s home. They are the best if you would ask me.

            Once during a visit they had planned of taking me to a nearby Lord Hanuman’s Temple situated in our locality. Even from a kid I always had a special liking towards Lord Hanuman. More over during those days (i.e. year 1995) there weren’t much of entertainment as of these days. So visiting temple itself was a great outing for me. As dusk was creping we entered the temple and luckily there wasn’t much crowd. Finishing prayers and receiving the holy theertham (Holy Water) and Thulasi we were about to leave. It was then that I noticed a monkey been tied up to a pillar inside the temple. There were few devotes who were offering fruits to that monkey. Curiosity has stopped whom as to stop me and so I dragged my grandparents towards it.

           Since we didn’t have any fruits to offer my grandfather suggested let’s move on but I stood there protesting not to move from there. So to satisfy me my grandpa gave few coins to offer to the monkey. With a great smile on my face I neared it, extended my hand with coin. The next minute I was shouting with pain. Actually what happened was I approached the monkey with the intention of giving the coin but the monkey thought that I was actually coming to snatch the fruits from it. So to protect it the monkey scratched my hand with its sharp nails. Throughout the way to hospital I was crying nonstop. I was given a Tetanus injection which made me to cry even further. It took so long for the scar to disappear.

Even today on visiting the temple I used to get a small smile on seeing the spot where the Monkey was tied, though it’s not alive now.