What is your idea about emotional conflicts?
Recently we have moved to a place where you don’t need any morning alarm. There is no buzz, no ting, no clink, and no chime. You can be wide awake by the screeching s and jolting sound of the monkeys who are like our next door neighbors. Every summer morning you would find them sitting on the roof of the nearby house. Sometimes the baby monkeys would be jumping from one tree to another or would be chasing each other as if playing hide and seek. Mostly the mother monkeys would sit in a row and would feed their babies .The babies would run here and there, rummage through the dried leaves and hop and pop in the nearest pitch. Sometimes they would climb the old thin water pipes and would perform different feats. Some of the old ones would lie down and place their heads on the lap of their partners who scratch their backs, detect a number of lice, snatch them and put them inside their mouths. However, there was nothing very striking about their activities which could bring a sudden change to our daily moribund city life. Though it was a fun to watch their antics for some time, but soon it became a normal affair like taking our meal, doing our office job, coming back home and stretching ourselves on the sofa in our living room. But yesterday it was the other way round. A huge gathering of the monkeys dragged us to our balcony.
“What is up?”said my husband.
“They might be planning for a feast.’’, giggled my son.
Suddenly there was a rush on the parapet. Armed with sticks and cudgels, five young men approached the group. But for a while, the men staggered. The reason behind this was one of the enormous body-builders. The patriarch pounced on them. Another big monkey attacked them from the other end but eventually, all of them were feeling helpless in front of the meticulous steps taken by the young men. The situation was beyond their control. So all the monkeys had to leave the battle- ground one by one. And they took shelter on the nearby terraces or trees. Only one lean and thin mother -monkey was still there. She would not leave the place. However, when the place became free from her fellow colleagues, we could now get the full view of the terrace. What we saw was amazing. A frail cute baby monkey was trapped between two very thin water-pipes. These two old thin water –pipes were linked with a water tank. The baby monkey had tried to climb the tank, but he could not. His neck was caught in between the two pipes .He was struggling a lot but could not get out of the trap. The mother went to him, tried her best but only stared at her baby with tired looks. She was ashamed of her futile efforts to save her child from the dangerous grip. Yet she could not leave him. She could be hit by the armed group. But she risked and would not budge from the place. She was the mother, the mother of the baby monkey. How could she leave her child in danger? And it was the Mother’s Day too. But whether it is a Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, a monkey can never know the difference. So out of sheer love and affection of a mother, the mother monkey felt dejected. She might be feeling totally insecure, yet she was sitting near the child as if assuring him of its safety.
“Are the young men scared of the monkeys?” , said my five-year old grandson.“
“They might have come here to fight.”, my son gave a passing remark.
But their entire guess turned into a fiasco when one of them rushed towards the baby monkey, grabbed its neck, got him free from the pipe, threw it towards the mother and ran away .The mother took hold of her kid and started feeding him. The story came to an end but it had an indelible imprint on my mind. It made me recall the glaring stares of my daughter-in-law when I wished to take my grandson in my arms when he was young. She could never part with her child for a moment. The situation was not the water-pipe trap or monkey-business. It was the mother- in-law syndrome.
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