Monkey Business

Once upon a time there were two big cats. Sworn enemies, they fought over the domination of different areas of the jungle. With his discerning eye and a nuanced pen, the monkey revealed the real character of the cats. Going by the script, he talked about the unobserved cruelties and exploitation of the animals by voicing their concern. In the days that passed, the animals looked up to the monkey for channeling their angst. As a result, several endemic monkey species flourished and multiplied.

Realizing the simian power, some cats began to nurture personal monkeys. Feeding morsels and purring secretly, the cats began to monkey around. Soon, the monkeys began to bell the cats. There were no established rules of owning a monkey. Amid all the back scratching and surrogate monkey ownership, the aging print monkey was losing out to the more invasive and aggressive electronic monkey. To be fair, the pen wielding monkey used to tell stories of injustice but not with the same sense panache as the electronic monkey. The electronic breed was able to sell any issue that had the potential to sell - sleaze, murder, corruption. As a result, the electronic cousins created an atmosphere where the demand for discontent ensured that the simians thrived, even if the cats were bruised occasionally.


Every evening around dinner time, an emboldened electronic monkey would sit on a tree branch and make a monkey out of the cats. He would pick one stray comment coming from the cat brigade, usually the most controversial to raise the adrenalin level of the jungle. Every second tree had one mischievous monkey telling a sensational story 24/7. If the cats from the neighboring jungle threatened, the monkey troops would raise shrill decibels, creating a war like situation. Around midnight, the entire jungle was abuzz with ‘Who Said What’ instead of ‘Who Did What’.

 Initially, the animals were complicit, for sensationalism is a shared pleasure. But when the monkeys refused to look in the mirror, the jungle began to see through the charade. Some mischievous ones would invite kooky characters, perch them on high branches and allow them to polarize the jungle by talking about competitive copulation. Not the ones to apologize for their mistakes, some electronic monkey’s fell in love with their own voice. “Look at me," they would screech."I’m the best.”

Meanwhile, a new breed of digital monkeys arrived from the jungles in the far west. While some chirped like birds, others provided free information with their impromptu antics. Feeling the heat, the aging print troops tried to use the digital creatures to their advantage.Some smart cats also tamed the digital brigade to consolidate their following. Given that the Primate Council was dominated by the simians and big cats, a largely unsupervised monkey troops were now interpreting situations in such a manner where the symbolic trumped the substantial.  

So who controlled the simians? Well, no one. Except that the impetuous digital brigade kept the erring troops on their toes. In an attempt to preserve the simian freedom and yet hold a mirror, the  digital apes acted as watch-monkeys. 

What happened to the cats you ask? Well, the cats have nine lives goes the feline dictum. They don’t come to an end unless the end comes to them. The cat fights continued. The latest round was to be fought over the central jungle area between a powerful cat and a new anarchist cat. And the monkeys were busy monkeying around.