The day before Venu was to leave Darjeeling and head back to Nepal we met for lunch in Chowrastra. I wanted to send a few things to some pals in Nepal and proof that I was in Darjeeling and that, yes, marriage plans were going ahead as planned.
It’d been a month since I’d seen any of my Peace Corps pals and I was starting to feel slightly disconnected.
After lunch at Keventers, Venu and I decided to walk up to the Mahakal Mandir on Observatory Hill. I was really interested in visiting the temple since Binita’s mother had originally told us that Binita and I would have our ceremony there.
The venue had since been moved to their house, which was fine with me, but I was still curious to see what this temple was like, what might have been.
When Venu and I reached the top of the hill and the main temple, a small, whitewashed stupa with prayer flags so numerous they smothered the sun and hid the dense tree line around the temple.
It was beautiful, but smaller than most temples I’d seen. We were walking around the temple when suddenly a monkey swooped down from a prayer flag, landing just to my left and behind Venu.
It was really pissed off about something, teeth showing and screaming one of those terribly loud monkey-screams.
After a second, a young guy working as a guide for the temple who we”d talked to just before came running around the temple. The monkey immediately gave ground and ran off. Venu and I laughed.
We then walked down below the temple to find the small cave that runs below the hill and then along a sidewalk that runs below the temple along the north-east side of the temple.
It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon so the Hindus were gone and we had the temple to ourselves—and a couple Bengali tourists.
As we came around that sidewalk and were heading back up to the temple, a monkey standing on the railing started screaming and flashing its teeth at us. Venu walked ahead of it and I tried to ignore it as well.
It suddenly jumped down from the railing and sprinted towards me. I gave ground a bit but noticed that the monkey was not stopping. After it was about a meter from me and heading at full pace I started running. And laughing.
I didn’t go far before I stopped and looked behind me. I knew that there was no way this monkey was going to chase me this far. But it had! The damn thing was still right behind me, teeth flashing and angry as hell.
I started to worry and ran further down the hill. After a minute, a three more monkeys responded to its screaming and there were four monkeys chasing me.
At this point, I was really running.
At the bottom of the sidewalk I tripped on a gutter and fell. When I got up the monkeys had again multiplied. There was another one standing on the railing just above me, which grabbed my jacket.
I had a newspaper with me and tried to use the daily news as a weapon, without much affect. I broke free and continued running, now with about half a dozen monkeys running after me.
The worst was this. As I was running back towards the main temple, more monkeys were swinging out of the forest (on prayer flags, actually) and dropping just next to me, swiping their claws and brandishing their teeth.
The six became seven, then eight. Finally I reached just below the main temple with a line of pissed monkeys rushing towards me.
Anyhow, I began to ascend the stairs when the Nepali guy who’d scared away the first monkey manifested out of nowhere with Venu behind him. Immediately the monkeys dispersed.
He comforted me by saying, The monkeys are very naughty. Sometimes they hurt people.
