ORANGES ARE SWEET, GRAPES ARE SOUR.

To look at something is quite different than to see something. One does not see anything unless it is pictured through the lens of a conscious reality. One day my niece gave me a frantic call. Breathlessly she unfolded an episode that sounded quite bizarre, even to my far- fetched imagination.

‘Auntie’, she said, ‘I don’t know what to make of this incident. I was sleeping in the afternoon when suddenly the doorbell rang. I got up and found my neighbour at the door. You see, she wanted to borrow something.’ That was hardly strange I told her, as that’s what neighbours are for.

‘No’, she cut me short, ‘the thing is when I went into the kitchen I found that the door would not budge an inch. It was as if something or someone prevented it from opening. When I pushed harder, I was shocked to see the state my kitchen was in. It was almost like a cyclone had just been through it. Everything was on the floor- the vegetables, the vessels, the crockery, everything. The containers were all open and all the dals, the nuts, the snacks, everything was scattered. The kitchen even smelt like a toilet, as there was… you know, everything everywhere. And as the house was locked there was no way anything or anyone could have got in from anywhere. I’m really scared. ’

‘And all this took place only in the kitchen?’ I asked. ‘Yes’ she said. As far as I knew there was no such thing as a ‘spot earthquake’. Even so, it would hardly be coupled with a rain of muck and filth. ‘Auntie’, she whispered, ‘do you think it was……?’

I not only thought it was. I was sure. Having mercilessly been weaned away from the good old suspense thrillers, we humans have recently been subjected to too many Sci-fi or horror movies. Therefore the only logical explanation, which would naturally have seemed Sherlockian earlier, suddenly appeared either too supernatural or too Extra Terrestrial. But since this accepted wisdom is frowned upon by the more rational ones and since no UFO was reported to be seen anywhere, I just advised her to hush up the affair. All it required was a thorough search of the entire scene (just in case a tiny alienated creature was waiting to be rescued) and a comprehensive cleansing of the kitchen (with water, disinfectants and prayers).

It was precisely fifteen days later that I was meted out the same treatment. Only my case was even weirder. You see, for past two decades I have always had a strange fascination for these beautiful contraptions- that which is hung outside homes to create soul stirring music whenever the wind decides to flirt with it. It was only recently, with the sudden emergence of Feng Shui in our country, that what I called ‘the musical thing’ finally found a meaning and a name. Its purpose, I was told, was to keep out the Yang (negative energy) and welcome the Yin (positive energy). And it was called a wind chime. Anyway, I am quite passionate about wind chimes and have an assortment of the oddest variety. They include Chinese bells of various shapes and sizes, a school of spiral ceramic fishes that cling and clang with a sea of breeze, hearts and angels that clash with the gusts of air, colourful elephants that dance with the wind and more recently, a bunch of oranges that sway with the blustery weather.

Out of all these, the oh-so-real thermocol ‘oranges’ were my favourite. Every time the wind blew, a fruity flavour was now added to those mellifluous sounds. Therefore, it really disturbed me one day to find that three out of the five oranges had neatly been plucked out. All the doors were again locked. In the recent past, none had dared to cross our gates, especially with the foreboding ‘Beware of Dog’ sign posted like a sentinel outside. Even so, squeezing in through the locked grills required an enormous amount of flexibility for a human form. Who could have done that? Who, but a curious wrinkled, wide- eyed, variable green little thing from outer space? Or a long armed Djinh with a fascination for fruits.

I spent the next few days in dread. My niece and myself even thought of exorcising our houses to rein in that gallivanting spirit or alien or whatever until….

One day I was woken from my afternoon siesta by a weird touch. When I opened my eyes I found myself looking straight into a mischievous pair of eyes. Someone was sitting on the bed. There was a silly grin on his curiously wrinkled face and he was tightly clutching onto the two remaining thermocol oranges(I had hung the half eaten windchime in our bedroom). Still in a state of deep slumber, for two immediate seconds I was dazed. For the next ten seconds my world stood still. Nothing moved but my thoughts and with every second, my belief in Mr. Charles Darwin and his theories were beginning to strengthen. Then I screamed. The monkey screamed too. He then jumped out of the bed and ran into the other room.

I followed him cautiously and what I saw there took my breath away. I immediately went back into the bedroom and stood there peeping from a crack in the door. There were at least twenty of them- of all shapes and sizes. The sight was familiar- almost exactly as my niece had described. A storm was brewing in my drawing room and the monkeys were creating it. Some were swinging from chair to chair, toppling them in the process. A few were examining my precious curios without actually touching them. One was embracing a stuffed toy (a huge black orangutan) that sat limply on the sofa. A mother with a miniscule creature pinned to her chest was relaxing on the beanbag. Two others sat in front of the aquarium, curiously watching the fishes. On the other corner I could spot carelessly strewn banana peels. Every box on the dining table was opened. A few sat munching on the snacks while others freely relieved themselves on my drawing-room turned playroom turned toilet. There was a bowl of artificial fruits on the table. Every fruit was bitten and thrown away. But my Prince Charming(the one who had woken me up from my beauty sleep) still held on tightly to the two recently ‘plucked’ oranges.

Just when I was wondering what had happened to my dog Champagne, I saw him mingled with the group. Being a Golden Retriever, he looked like a bigger version of them. He was sitting on his haunches, looking expectantly at his newfound ‘friends’, gobbling up whatever they decided to toss him- probably as a favour for letting them inside without a whimper. After another fifteen more minutes of monkeying around, they finally left. Champagne followed them outside, probably to wave them goodbye. Surprisingly, they broke nothing but my routine (I spent the next two hours cleaning up the mess) and took nothing but the two remaining ‘oranges’.

As I sat stunned there was a telephone call. ‘Auntie, Auntie’. It was my niece. ‘That was no ghost’ she said excitedly. ‘The doors were all locked but what I forgot to tell you was that there was a small hole on top of the wall for the exhaust fan to be put up. My neighbour faced the same problem yesterday. You’ll never be able to guess who came in through that hole.’

‘Monkeys?’ I said.

‘Oh!’ she sounded disappointed. ‘But how did you know?’

I shrugged. I hated to burst her bubble of excitement at having solved the puzzle so easily. ‘Well’, I began my speech. ‘To look at something is quite different than from actually seeing it. One does not see anything unless……..’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever’, she said, cutting in through my philosophy.

The next day was my birthday. My niece presented me with another wind chime. It was a beautiful piece with bunches of grapes dangling in spirals. I hung it up someplace safe, where it could be seen but not accessed. ‘I hope those monkeys don’t take this away too’ she said.

‘Don’t worry’ I said, vowing to be more alert than the lax and friendly neighbourhood dog of mine. ‘When anything is accessible, the oranges often appear sweet. But when something is unattainable, the grapes will always seem sour’. And if there was even an iota of this human awareness ingrained in those primates, I knew that this wind chime would always remain safe in my home.

Nargis Natarajan.