DEATH STALKS THE COOK

That year in the winters there was a sharp increase in the number of
monkeys in the town. They would appear anywhere. They moved in
hordes- the male the female and the kids. And they attacked at the slightest provocation.

Electricity poles on the roof of the houses were their first target! The
leader- the fattest of the daddy monkeys - would climb up the eight feet high eiectric pole on the roof, shake it so thorouhly that the wires touched and shortcircuited, blowing
out the fuse. Then, satisfied with the damage done, they would come down and create havoc elsewhere. They devastated the kitchen garden, uprooting the plants.

Two features which were common in the bunglows of the old british days were :
1)  There was a walled big
courtyard on the opposite side of the front lawn for the ladies of the house. The kitchen was far at the back of this courtyard, away from the main building.
2)  The doors had wooden square grills on their upper half portion with big glass panes. So you could see what was going outside with the door firmly shut. It also provided ample light to the rooms.

That fateful day in the winter Katwaroo, our young and tough cook,
came out of the kitchen, which was at the far end of the big courtyard. It was two o'clock in the afternoon. He locked the kitchen door and turned round to proceed to his quarters outside the walled courtyard.

He spotted a small monkey in the kitchen garden, in the tomato beds, damaging plants. Katwaroo picked up big stone and tossed it at the monkey only to scare it away. It hit the monkey so squarely on the face that he fell down, screaming hoarsely. Within seconds dozens of ferocious red-faced big monkeys materialised from nowhere and raced to attack Katwaroo. It was total WAR. An army of monkeys against one defenceless man!

The door of the Kitchen had already been locked by Katwaroo and there was no time now for him
to rush back to open it for shelter. So he desparately turned towards the house for safety, with countless monkeys on his trail !

There were two rooms with doors opening into that verandah to which
katwaroo was now desparately racing.
In the morning the glass-pane door of father's room had been latched from inside by katwaru himself when father
left for office (he had put the latch at the top of the door). The other room's
door was also bolted from inside, at the top and the bottom. This other room was full of children from the neighbourhood. We
were busy playing indoor games.

I rushed to this glass paned door when I heard the howling of the monkeys. As I peeped out through the glass panes, I saw katwaroo racing for his life into the verandah. He was now very close
to the door of father's room. A ferocious huge monkey had caught up
with him and had torn away the bottom of one of the pyjama legs, drawing blood.

With the door shut from inside, katwaroo's life was now in grave danger as it was a race against time, race against killer monkeys. Several fat ferocious monkeys were now closing in. Katwaroo was trapped !!

What happened next was sheer magic. In one fluid moment that is forever etched in my memory,
Katwaroo thrust his powerful right fist through uppermost glass pane,
shattering it and injuring the hand. In that split second he opened the inside latch,moved in and slammed the door shut. The door hit the face of the first big daddy monkey that was trying to follow him into the room. The monkey recoiled in pain and withdrew.

The verandah was now filling with howling monkeys.They were rapidly filling it and pushing at the closed door.

Suddenly two powerful gunshots rent the air, shaking the doors and rattling the glass panes. Our neighbour Singh saheb had fired two shots in the air from his double barrel gun. I saw him on
the roof of his house with the smoking gun in
his hands.

Within seconds not a single monkey was anywhere in the entire
colony ! They panicked and disappeared .

Katwaroo came out. I gave him some antiseptic and a wad of cotton-wool to treat his bruises and cuts.

With a matchstick he set the cottonwool wad on fire and pressed it hard on his bleeding leg and hand.

"This works best" he said returning the antiseptic to me, and walked towards his quarter, loudly whistling.The race had ended !!

I looked at the receding figure of Katwaroo . . . and I recalled a famous quote : "When the going gets tough, tough get going." YES INDEED... !!