Dear Monkey

 It was summer I guess when mom bought me you. A day lit with the scorching sunrays but it doesn’t affect me with sunburns, so I find my pleasure in this weather. Me, accompanied with my boater, and my mother were on the way to the street markets for buying the starters of summer season. While she was busy haggling with the vegetable seller, I saw you sitting at the corner of a very old shop, by the way it looked so, filled with toys like you. I started pulling on my mother’s last piece of kurta to get her attention towards you. After the contention, I showed her you and she agreed to buy me you in one go since I was not like the ‘always needy children’. 

But I doubt if my decision was good enough now.

My father hung you high in between the two sides of a door. While you were meant for hanging, I used to watch you closely all the time. Having the resemblance of half a monkey, half a bear, with a nose like that of a beak of a bird. Brown colored but without any fur, with big round eyes and a hanging tie behind your neck to hang you. You were all simple, but the thing my mother found weird was that you spoke while you were stuffed with fur from within, you weren’t porcelain. But I saw you more like a monkey.

Mother figured out that when we make a sound with the sole of our foot, you ask to say something. One day I found an exciting thing about you, and hence while mother was out, I used to say to you to sing me the lines you rhymed. I even remember some which you sang all the time as- 

“See the rising sun, see the sunshine,

See me looking at you, from the void of lies,

See the rising king, whose queen is Miss Nine,

As she ate all the nine monkeys in her dine.”

At that time I couldn’t even make the meaning out of it, and guess I never can too as I wonder why you were always like this, singing things, telling whom? You didn’t talk back but you wished us the good mornings and good nights. I wasn’t a much fan of figuring out stuffs which are hard to understand, but mom did. She felt it was weird of you of the timing when you spoke. The way she calculated when you talked wasn’t much of a help because you started talking whenever you liked. It wasn’t a sound or a tick to make you start or any buttons in you to stop it, and I still wonder how you were able to rock the sales in markets. 

Everything was going good but after few weeks, days started getting odd. One night, I woke up to watch a video playing in your belly. I still don’t know if it was a dream but I feel like it wasn’t. Hazy buzz on busy streets, where people were walking down the aisle to do chores, while in the back, as I saw, shops were flooded with toys like you. You were singing the ‘Money’ poem, one of the few present in your mind cassettes, while I slept watching the tape. 

“Money, money, money, what a wondrous chime,

But watch what it brought you, a harbinger of crime.”

I never fancied a shut down on the things which were unusual, but those things didn’t stand a chance in front of mom. She threw you inside the drawer of bed after facing an irritation of your inevitable talking. But as the house went silent in afternoons, she used to hear a scratching sound echoing in the hollow drawers. And as she went to check, it was a sight of horror for me too, as I saw the scratched marks on the inside walls, when I knew you had no nails.

We didn’t throw you away early because we thought all these happenings were very much normal for we didn’t liked wasting money, for any hypothetical reason. But you know the neighbors, they know everything. The thing was that our neighbor had also bought a similar monkey like you and she also experienced the same with you. As a result, she did throw you out in the backyard ditches of our apartment, for she was very much concerned about bad things. I eavesdropped on their conversation with my mom one day from behind the curtains, when I got to know another poem which you sang in their house which was unfamiliar as you never sang this one for me-

“Sun feeds a desert, same as time feeds you,

Truth is buried under, to reap a tree of lies in you.”

The lady was so scared for she witnessed an eye-wrenching episode of you. At night, in her house, while she was standing in the hallway, drinking a glass of water, she watched your eyes gleam with a red light as you sang these to her. Maybe she understands much more than me the words of you for she threw you out the other morning. They talked that afternoon, when I stood there staring deep into your eyes for the red lights.

The time was not far when you would leave this city.

Mother dumped you the next day in the backyard but guess what? You cling to the fence as mom reached her full height potential. It was no wonder that you certainly were an unusual toy to be kept. The next day the city cleaning van came and they took you to a different place, a place much out of my thinking area.

But I still try to think about your presence in this world, because somewhere I still do want to hear your poems again. This doesn’t have any roots to begin with but if I am being honest, I think my summer was also gone with you.