Independence Day Monkey Business

Just like the 75th Independence Day is a big celebration this year, the 50th Independence Day was an equally big event celebrated in 1997. However, it turned out to be quite a catastrophic experience for me!

I had just completed my MA in history in Delhi University and was at a loose end, contemplating what to do with my life. I was undecided. My cousin on the other hand was the exact opposite. She knew from the very start that she wanted to be a schoolteacher.

Well, it was the first school she had joined – a small private school in North Delhi, and she invited me and my mother for the flag hoisting ceremony. There were to be speeches, refreshments, and a race among two pre-decided teams after the flag hoisting. The event was at the school sports grounds – a small, Ram Lila-like ground and we were to reach at 7am sharp.

We reached on time to find the premises beautifully decorated. A side table was laden with refreshments – barfi, samosa, and potato chips served on paper plates, big bottles of orange flavoured premixed Rasna (a synthetic, sweet, squash-mix soft drink) poured into small pith cups organized in rows. There were two large stainless steel cannisters of tea, and it all looked welcoming and promising.

The ground had been watered, and prepared with white lines, ready for the runners, and the loudspeaker was playing patriotic Manoj Kumar songs. It had rained the previous night, and everyone was getting ready to listen to I.K. Gujral’s Independence Day speech, delivered from the ramparts of the Red Fort, relayed over the loudspeakers tuned-in to Akash Vani.

The children were sitting in laundered uniforms on the grass, in neat rows, small paper flags flapping in their hands. The two sport teams dressed in spotless white would sing the National Anthem on the small, decorated stage that had a podium table, and help the principal unfurl the flag. The cloth covering the podium said ‘Happy 50th Independence Day’ in colourful paper cut-outs accompanied by bunches of balloons. We guests sat on neatly organized plastic chairs.

And then the pandemonium began. A large group – an extended clan of monkeys (the red-faced ones) suddenly appeared out of nowhere and lumbered amicably into the compound from the neighbouring rooftops and trees. They must have been attracted by the sight and smell of food and drinks.

Panic spread among the children sitting on the ground with their paper flags, and they began getting up from the ground and screaming. While some ran, others started shooing the monkeys away, brandishing their small flags at the monkeys, like swords. Others started charging, yelling loudly and making faces at the monkeys, to scare them.

It was 7.30am and the principle was waiting for the Independence Day speech to start on the TV in her office. Adjusting her saree and rehearsing her speech, she kept an eye out for Gujral on the TV screen in her room, drawing strength from him. She would have to be as dignified as him.

But soon, the screams outside drew her attention. She rushed to the window and one look convinced her that the matter was out of her control. She did something really stupid then. Instead of rushing out to show solidarity, she locked the door from inside, drew the curtains, switched off the tube-light and TV, and pretended not to be there. She grew terrified and paralyzed. But it was a major lapse in her leadership.

Soon the school peon and other teachers began pounding on her door, and somebody broke it open. They pounced on her. Some teachers began slapping and punching her for locking herself in and abandoning them – venting their ire, and not in a mood to listen to what she was saying – that the situation was beyond her control. But this was to no avail, as another teacher began boxing her ears. The principle was weeping uncontrollably, and someone had the presence of mind to phone the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), Fire Brigade, and the Police, asking them to come to the school’s and the Principal’s aid.

My mother and I took shelter behind plastic chairs huddled in a corner, used as shields, and peered out from between the gaps. The monkeys thankfully were too busy to see us. They had initially been taken aback at the emotional enthusiasm shown by the children, and then had retaliated fiercely and aggressively, as the children started throwing stones at them.

The monkeys charged a full-scale attack on the children that day, freely biting and scratching everything and everybody that came in their path. One of them sprang onto a teachers head, and clawed at her eyes. The food was completely destroyed and eaten by the monkeys, and the small stage decorations were destroyed. The flag remained furled-up that day, tied up in a bunch with its rose petals intact.

The biting spree and siege continued interminably for another fifteen minutes or so – it seemed more like an hour – as an intense hominid warfare of survival unfurled in front of our eyes.

One of the teachers had the bright idea of getting a garden hose pipe, and using the water to douse the scene. She had seen how water-cannons controlled mobs on TV. But a garden hose hardly had the force of a water-cannon. Instead, it had the opposite effect of creating more mayhem, as people slipped and fell in the muck that was by now a mix of food, blood, and monkey faeces (yes … the monkeys in excitement had defecated everywhere).

Thankfully the SPCA, the Fire Brigade, and the Local Police arrived. They slipped and fell too as they tried to catch the monkeys. The SPCA had large nets. It took them over 45 minutes to bring the situation under control. They too sustaining many monkey bites. One monkey had died, while all the teachers and students had sustained brutal bites, and fractures. One teacher had a serious eye injury.

The scene was a nightmare. Somebody had had the good sense to turn off the hose, and the principal apathetically weeping, bruised and bloody-nosed, her hair undone, and saree torn by now, was rescued by the police. The grounds looked like there had been a war. The school cleaner bagged the monkey corpse and took it away. Parents, beginning to arrive by then, simply added to the hysteria, screaming, weeping, and shrieking. The sports teacher lay on his back in the middle of the lawn and wailed loudly up at the sky.

My mother and I emerged gingerly from behind our plastic chairs like hurricane survivors, and hobbled silently, holding hands to the main gate. Thankfully we found an auto and returned home to see that my cousin had beaten us to the chase. She was already home, and regaling my father about what had happened. She had made a timely escape when the school principal’s room was broken into, knowing that the situation would only escalate now onwards.

The schoolteachers who had clobbered the principal had to face police cases and suspensions, and the school had to shift, as the monkey gang kept returning to search for the corpse of their lost family member. The SPCA had simply released them into the wild, in another corner of Delhi’s vast ridge regions. Well, the monkeys weren’t exactly idiots! They had found their way back!

It took me and my mother several months to recover from the trauma, and we winced every time we saw a monkey – which was pretty often in the Delhi University’s North Campus.

I have celebrated many an Independence Day, but none like the one marking the 50th years of Independence in 1997.

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