Monkeys

Almost all the writers that I have read, who had or have children, were inspired at some point in their careers if not all the time, by their children -  their words, antics, schools, playgrounds, friends, hobbies, in short the world of children through their own. It’s impossible not to get influenced. And I am no different.

When they were babies, my children inspired songs and poems and even little stories in me. Watching them grow and listening to their conversation triggered images in my mind which in turn lead to more poetry and prose, not necessarily for children. Even today,  entering their world, their environment triggers words and rhythms, images and sounds that have to be put down on either paper or the computer screen, whichever is handy at the moment.

Once my daughter, then aged around eight,  walked in when I was listening to “Rapture of the Deep” (one of my favourite songs by one of my fave bands!). She looked at the title of the track , waited for the song to be over and then said, “when sailors feel hypnotised deep in the ocean and don’t want to come up again, that’s rapture of the deep.”

“Yea?” I said without much interest.

“Yea. Deep down and too much of nitrogen or something in their heads does it,” she explained.

Her face had that singular expression children get when they are deep inside the vision/s conjured up by words, either their own or someone else’s, that have just been uttered.  And I suddenly saw what she was seeing, the meaning of the word in various shades of blue deep within the ocean. My poem “Rapture of the Deep” was shortly born and found a home in A Little Poetry thereafter.  That’s one example. It’s not a children’s poem per se, but definitely “safe” for children to read!

A couple of years ago, when my daughter joined her brother at school, she complained to me over phone about the monkeys. My son had always been telling me about “them monkeys with hair styles” almost from the very first day of his joining. So every time we went to see him and subsequently both, I watched the monkeys. They indeed had different hair styles and attitudes as well.  The first few lines of a poem (this one is a real children’s poem!) began to buzz around in my head. And then when I heard my daughter speak in her still baby voice on the phone (“Mamma, there’s a monkey without a tail in the school, and he’s the leader, and he’s very ferocious, and he bullies us to give up our buns at tea time, and then the other monkeys also copy him!”) , the poem was truly clinched in my head!

Soon after I wrote it I sent it off to the Forward Press of UK (for their anthology of children’s poetry – Take a Peek…). They sent me an acceptance letter by post many months later. I assume it was published in their anthology, because I asked a fellow poet who lives in London to check it out, and he said that he had seen my name in the  anthology. At £16  per copy, the anthology was too steep for me to buy from India, so I had to request my overseas friend to see if my poem was there!

I also shared the poem with my children’s teachers and to my surprise they published it in the 150th year anniversary issue of the school magazine! It’s a privately published and circulated, hard cover coffee table book sized volume, with a glossy jacket. I am probably the only mom there among all the children and their creative writing offerings! 

THE LAWRENCIAN MONKEYS

(For the residents of The Lawrence School, Lovedale)

 

The Lawrencian monkeys have the latest of hair styles

Oh yes! The Lawrencian monkeys are way too cool

The Lawrencian monkeys are intellectual guys

Though the sight of ripe bananas can make them drool

 

Their tails swinging from shingled roofs

These monkeys slide into classrooms full of scholars

Picking up pens by the handfuls as proofs

Of their talent for jobs requiring starched white collars

 

So woe to the boy or girl who perchance

Laughs at the monkeys’ cerebral abilities

They might as well be banished to France

Than face what could be the worst of calamities

 

For the Lawrencian monkeys won’t tolerate

Clowns, buffoons, dullards and duffers

They follow strict laws on their simian estates

And act swiftly against all and sundry trespassers 

 

Recycling is an art, these monkeys have mastered

They duck into the school bins with practiced ease

Their limbs get busy and their faces get plastered

But they’ll pose alright, if you come and say: “Cheese!”

 

The school’s large dining hall is another place where

These simian wardens of etiquette regularly patrol

Forget the students; even the teachers aren’t ever spared

When they come out chomping on a half eaten dinner roll

 

So the students of The Lawrence School, it is rumoured

In their quest to keep these monkeys always good humoured

Collect nearly all the buns that they get for their evening tea

And, offer them up to the apes with a respectful: “Hail to Thee!”

The monkeys then descend with heartwarming panache and charm

They eat the buns and trash the cups; that’s all. The rest are unharmed.

 

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

 

After they’d read it the teachers of The Lawrence School told me that my poem could do with another stanza, because, (and this is simply weird!) the monkeys migrate away from the school the very day the students break for vacations and they return exactly on the dot on the very day the students return! Even before the first student batch reaches the school, the monkeys are there, waiting. How they can tell before hand is a mystery, unsolved for 150 years! Incidentally the school’s seven hundred acres also boasts wild boar and the occasional leopard! The spoor of the latter have been seen, though the beast has not. And once a boy riding his horsewas stopped right in his tracks because a leopard crashed out of the bushes chasing a boar – but this could be a school (student) legend! The Madhumalai forest starts at a point where portion of the school’s boundary ends, so leopards could come in I suppose! Yes, I confess, The Lawrence  School does inspire me; a story or play is prowling in my head about a leopard now! Heh!

Tags: "Take a Peek...", A Little Poetry, The Forward Press, The Lawrence School