Was There a Picture Taken?

One day, way back in 2003, when we lived at #27, baby Nachi was just an infant, and Pappa had a ritual with him. Pappa had built #27 in 1991. It had two rooms — Pappa and Amma had one, and Didi and I shared the other. Once Nachi was born, a new ritual was born with him. Didi, who'd taken over Pappa and Amma's bed, would be up with Nachi at odd hours through the night and would catch up on sleep once Pappa took over with him in the morning.

Pappa would lay out bedsheets and quilts on the living room floor, one on top of the other, rolling some into makeshift bolsters along all four sides to create a sort of nest, with Nachi placed right in the centre. Then he'd play music — M.S. Subbulakshmi, Maharajapuram Santhanam, Pandit Jasraj, Bhimsen Joshi, Kumar Gandharva, Hariprasad Chaurasia — and the whole house would fill with it, while Nachi cooed loudly along, deeply engaged in conversation with the ceiling fan.

This particular day, Pappa was sitting at the front of the house sipping his coffee, Didi was catching up on sleep, Amma was in the kitchen, and I was in my room. As usual, the front and back doors — both opening onto the gardens — were wide open. Our backyard had a mango tree, a frangipani, and the neighbour's coconut trees forming a canopy overhead.

A monkey wandered in at some point during all this, and none of us noticed.

When I came out of my room, I gasped and called out, "Amma!" We froze. A monkey scratch means a round of anti-rabies shots, so you can imagine the fear when we saw it sitting right by the baby's head — perfectly relaxed, enjoying the cool fan air and the music. The moment it spotted Amma and me, it darted straight out the front door.

Pappa shouted, "Uma, there was a monkey, there was a monkey!" We rushed to the front gate just in time to see it climbing a tree outside.

"Go close the back door," Amma said urgently. My sister, thankfully, was still asleep — otherwise we'd never have heard the end of it. As a new mom, didi was very vigilant about everything - big and small about the child. She was particular as a mother.  

Amma and Pappa hurried back to check on the baby, terrified of finding a scratch or a bite. But Nachi was cooing and laughing, utterly delighted with his morning. Amma checked him over, then over again, and gave him a bath in a tub of Dettol, just to be safe.

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When Didi finally woke up, and we told her what happened, she — probably because she'd finally gotten a proper night's sleep — just said, "Aww, how cute. Was there a picture taken?"

What? What happened to the sister I knew?

Lucky monkey.