Read Ebook: To a Youth at School by Religious Tract Society Great Britain

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Ebook has 159 lines and 13740 words, and 4 pages

From that day on, Kari was never upset by the barking of dogs, but went through strange villages without paying any attention to them, no matter how hard they barked at his heels.

Now that he had become immune to dogs, we tried to make him like monkeys. Monkeys, as you know, are very annoying little creatures. I had a pet monkey of my own named Kopee, who was red-faced and tawny-coated. He never came near the elephant, and Kari never thought of going near him. Whenever we went out, this monkey used to sit on my shoulder, and if we passed through bazaars where mangoes and other fruits were sold, it was very difficult to keep Kopee from getting into mischief. In India everything is shown in the open, and the mangoes lie in baskets piled up one above the other like little hills. There were places where oranges were heaped up like big burning rocks. Here and there you could see brown men robed in white sitting near these mountains of fruit, bargaining about the prices.

Now it is very good to smell the fragrance of fruit, and one day while going through the lane of a village, as the fragrance of the fruit grew stronger, I forgot all about Kopee, and did not realize that I was carrying him on my shoulder.

Somehow the little monkey always knew when I was not thinking of him. At such moments he would invariably jump off my shoulder and run straight for the oranges or mangoes, take one or two of them and then make a dive for a sheltered spot. This upset the whole bazaar. Hundreds of men would pursue him from tree to tree, yelling and throwing stones till he vanished out of sight.

Of course, I used to get terribly frightened, fearing that the men would attack me for carrying such a mischievous monkey. I would hurry out of the bazaar and make for home as fast as I could go. Then in an hour or two I would find Kopee on the house top, looking perfectly innocent and scratching himself. No one could ever tell by his face that he had stolen fruit a short while before.

When the time came for me to go to town, I was anxious to take Kopee and Kari with me, and I wanted the elephant to like the monkey and the monkey to behave like a gentleman toward the elephant. One day I brought the monkey on my shoulder and held him tight with both hands in front of the pavilion where the elephant was busy eating all kinds of saplings. Sometimes he would take a strong twig and unravel the top into a soft, fluffy tuft; then he would seize the other end of it with his trunk and brush himself. The moment he saw the monkey, he snorted and raised his trunk to grab him. With one wild scream the monkey jumped off my shoulder, climbed up the pavilion post and disappeared on the roof.

I went to Kari and spoke to him. I said, "Kari, in order to like dogs you killed one, now don't kill my monkey in order to like monkeys." He was very displeased that I should ever want him to like monkeys, because elephants are very much like some people who don't like to associate with others who have come from nowhere and whom they consider their inferiors. Elephants don't like to associate with monkeys, for they came from nowhere. You must remember, too, that elephants rarely see monkeys because monkeys are above the elephants most of the time, jumping and squealing among the trees in a manner most annoying to a quiet and sedate creature like an elephant.

It did not take more than a week, however, to bring Kari and Kopee together. One day there was a pile of fruit lying in the open, and the elephant stood at one end eating and the monkey at the other, both enjoying the feast. Of course, the elephant ate faster than the monkey, and realizing this, Kopee began to eat more quickly and soon had enormous pouches on each side of his face. Before long all the fruit was gone and the two animals were left facing each other. The monkey trembled with fear. He was almost on the point of running away to a tree-top, but, no one knows why, the elephant turned away from him and went into his pavilion. This gave the monkey great courage, so he went straight up to the roof of the pavilion, and peering down through the eaves, found out that the elephant lived on twigs and fruits and saplings just like himself. Having watched all this, I then got up on Kari's back and whistled to the monkey. He leaped down from the tree onto my shoulder. The elephant shivered for a moment and then was absolutely still. When I ordered him "mali," he walked on.

At last we set off for the city, Kari, and Kopee now the best of friends. It was very interesting at night going through the jungle country. The moonlight was intense, falling like white waters on the land. You could see the tree-tops, and at midnight almost clear down to the very floor of the jungle where the shadows were thick like packs of wolves crouching in sleep. The elephant went through these regions perfectly care-free. He did not care who came or went or what happened.

But not so the monkey. Monkeys, you know, are always afraid of snakes, and do you know why? Snakes go up trees and eat birds and their younglings. Monkeys also live by stealing eggs from different birds' nests. Now it sometimes happens that the snake eats all the birds' eggs in the nest and is resting there when the monkey puts his hands in to grab the eggs, so the monkey instead of getting the eggs is stung to death. As this sort of thing has been happening for thousands of years, it is natural that they fear snakes.

Monkeys also get punished for using their hands too much. Now, if you come across a snake, the best thing to do is not to touch it. Monkeys, however, accustomed to using their hands continually, grab a snake whenever they see one with the result that the snake usually stings them to death. I have never seen a snake do this, but I have seen dead snakes with marks on their bodies showing that monkeys had twisted them like ropes, broken their backs and thrown them down before the snakes could use their fangs. This, however, is very rare.

As we were going through the jungle that night, Kopee would shiver with terror whenever there was a swish of a snake's body in the grass below or in the leaves above, and I had to put my hand on his back and whisper, "Don't be afraid, you are on the elephant's back and nothing can touch you."

Another thing that used to frighten him was the hooting of the night owl. Any monkey that lives in the jungle is used to it, but as Kopee was born among human beings and had always lived with them, he had never heard jungle noises. When the owls beat their wings and gave the mating call and hoot, it was like a foam of noise rising over a river of silence. I, too, was alarmed when I would suddenly hear the hooting in my sleep, but both Kopee and I soon got used to it.

About four o'clock in the morning Kari stopped and refused to go a step further. Though I was asleep, Kopee began to pull me by the hand, and instantly after being aroused, I heard, or rather felt, as if clouds were passing by. The monkey's eyes were all eagerness and burning with excitement, and I looked down where he was looking. The honey-colored moon was casting slanting rays into the jungle through dark moving clouds. We did not know what we saw. It seemed as though two or three hundred wild elephants in a herd were going through the jungle, or perhaps the clouds were feeding on the leaves that night. No one knows what it was, but we did know Silence walked by, telling us of the mysteries of the jungle, and we could not understand.

Then out of the stillness a bird's note fell through the jungle and there was a gleam of whiteness. That instant Silence was lifted, dawn began to sing through the jungle and you could hear its flute-like call fading away in the distance, followed by a momentary hush. Then the birds began to sing, and soon the sun came leaping over the forest like a horse of flame. This must have taken at least an hour and a half, but we did not even know when the elephant resumed his walk.

We soon came to a river where we stopped. I gave the elephant his bath. The monkey went off in search of food from tree to tree. Then I bathed myself and stood facing the East, saying these words of prayer:

"O Blossom of Eastern Silence, Reveal to us the face of God, Whose shadow is this day, and Whose light is always within us. Lead us from the unreal to the Real, From sound into Silence, From darkness unto Light, and From death into Immortality."

In India every hour has its prayer and every prayer can be said unconsciously anywhere. Nobody notices you if you kneel down on the road to say your prayer, in spite of the fact that you are blocking the traffic. Religion runs like singing waters by the shores of every human life in India.

I went to the forest nearby and got the elephant his food, and as he started to eat I began to cook my own meal. When traveling, it is better to cook one's own meal so that it will be clean and uncontaminated. Very soon I saw a caravan coming. Apparently Kopee had seen it from the tree-top as he was chattering with great excitement to tell me it was coming. I told him to hold his tongue because the elephant was getting restless.

I decided to go with the caravan into the town because the caravan people knew the shortest way. I also preferred to travel in human company rather than alone. No sooner had the caravan reached us than our attention was drawn to the faces of the camels probing the distance. You know how a camel examines the air as he goes along--he is continually stretching forth his head and smelling the air, and he can do this easily with his long neck. As camels live in the desert they must keep smelling the air to find out its humidity. Every time the air is very humid they know that water is nearby. That is why we call camels the examiners of space; in your country you would call them animal barometers.

The moment Kari saw the camels he snorted in anger, though the monkey was excited and thrilled. You see, elephants are the aristocrats of animals, while camels are snobs. You can easily tell a snob, he holds his head in a very supercilious way, always looking down on everyone, and don't you think if you put a monocle on a camel's eye he would look like any snob that walks down the avenue? Nevertheless, I made my elephant join the camels. That is to say, we kept about one hundred yards behind them because I could not let the monkey bound from camel hump to camel hump, and it would not do to let the elephant put his trunk about the camels' necks and twist them.

Toward midday the whole caravan stopped and all the animals were tied under different trees for two or three hours to rest. As we knew we could easily reach the city by sun-down, we all enjoyed our siesta. About half-past three, the doves began to coo, and that made the monkey sit up and listen. Being a dweller of the trees by birth, Kopee was always sensitive to tree sounds. Soon a cuckoo called from the distance and in a few moments the caravan was ready to move on. Nothing exciting happened the rest of the journey.

KARI'S ADVENTURE IN BENARES

As the sun went down in the gathering silence of the evening, we entered the city of Benares, the oldest city in India. For three thousand years stone has been laid on stone to keep this city with its haughty towers and sombre domes above the rushing and destroying currents of the sacred river. The river like a liquid ax is continually cutting away the foundations of the city. At night you can hear the whispering Ganges gnawing at the stone embankments. And that is why all the tall towers of Benares lean slightly over the water's edge. Their roots are being cut as beavers cut the roots of trees. And any Hindu who comes into Benares feels the age of India; she has lived very long--indeed too long, and it seems time no more clings to her than the morning dew clings to the lion's mane.

We went through Benares in a long, narrow file. The camels went first, and the monkey, who had jumped off my shoulder, was leaping from roof to roof following the tide of the caravan. Sometimes he would run ahead and chatter; and then suddenly disappear among roofs and walls. Then he would rush back to talk to me. I fastened two silver bells dangling from silver chains to the elephant's sides, and the cool sound of the bells sank into the cooler serenity of the Indian evening. People were walking about in purple and gold togas; on the house-tops were pigeons whose throats shone like iridescent beads. Through latticed balconies you could see the faces of women with eyes warm and tranquil as the midnight.

We had not gone very far when Kari put out his trunk and took a peacock fan out of a lady's hand as she leant against the railing of a balcony. He then proceeded to give it to me. I made him stop and give it back to its owner. The lady, however, would not take it. "Oh, little dreamer of the evening," she said, "cool thyself with my peacock fan. Thy elephant is very wise, but I am afraid he is no worse a scamp than thou art."

I took the fan, made my bow to the lady and went on. Hardly had we gone two more blocks when the screaming and jabbering monkey fell upon us. Behind him on the roof of one of the houses we saw a man with a long cudgel which he shook at the monkey. I stopped the elephant again and said to the man, "Why art thou irate when the evening is so cool, little man of the city?"

"That monkey! Ten thousand curses upon him!" he said. "He has been teasing my parrot in its cage, and has plucked so many of its feathers that it now looks like a beaked rat."

At this the man on the roof got very angry and began to hurl all kinds of abuses at me, but I prodded the elephant with my foot and he walked on, while the swearing and cursing of the little man of the city resounded in the stillness of the night. Nothing befell us that night as we took shelter in the open grounds outside of the city.

The following morning long before day-break, I heard nothing but the beat, beat, beat of unknown feet on the dusky pavement of Benares. It seemed as though the stillness of the night were hurrying away. I left my animals where they were and went in quest of these beating feet. There is something sinister in this walk of the Hindu. The Hindu walks with a great deal of poise, in fact, very much like an elephant, but he also has the agility of the panther. I did not realize it until that early morning when I heard the moving feet, as one hears dogs on the hurrying heels of a stag.

Soon I reached the river bank where I saw thousands and thousands of pilgrims crowding the steps of the Ghaut, the staircase leading to the river, bathing and waiting to greet the dawn. As I followed their example and took my bath, there arose over the swaying crowd and the beating feet, a murmur like the spray of foam on the seashore after the breakers have dashed against the beach. Then the day broke like two horses of livid light rushing through the air. In the tropics the day-break is very sudden. Hardly had those streaks of light spent themselves through the sky and over the waters, when a golden glow fell upon the faces of the people and they raised their hands in a gesture of benediction, greeting the morning sun which rose like a mountain of crimson under a tide of gold. All of us said our morning prayer, thousands of voices intoning together.

I could not stay at the Ghaut very long, however. I knew my animals would be looking for me, so I hastened back. Lo and behold, this sight greeted me! The monkey was sitting on the neck of the elephant, and Kari, who had never been accustomed to that sort of thing was running all around, raising his trunk and bending it backwards to reach the monkey in frantic efforts to shake him off. The one spot that an elephant cannot shake, however, is his neck, so the monkey stayed there perfectly calm, looking into space, secure in his seat.

I shouted to Kari to stop, and seeing me, he came rushing towards me, trembling. He made an effort to shake Kopee off, but the monkey was glued to his neck. I swore at Kopee and told him to get off. He looked down at me as if nothing had happened. I, too, was very irritated, for even I had never seen a monkey on an elephant's neck. That is considered very improper. I threw a stone at the monkey and he jumped from the elephant's neck, went straight up a tree and stayed there. I patted Kari's back and tried to soothe him. Then I took him by the ear and we walked into town.

Kari loved human beings; the more he saw them, the happier he felt. He glided by them like a human child. I was very proud of him and his behavior. As we went on our way, a mouse ran out of a hole in the foundations of a house in front of us. Kari turned around, curled up his trunk, put it in his mouth and ran. You see elephants are not afraid of anything except mice, for a mouse can crawl into an elephant's trunk and disappear in his head. I was humiliated beyond measure at Kari's behavior. He did not stop till he reached the open ground which we had left half an hour before. The monkey was still sitting in the tree. Seeing us, he shook a purse at me. He had stolen somebody's purse and was holding it in his hands waiting for it to be ransomed.

Monkeys are very much like bandits. Once, I remember, my little sister who was two months old, was lying in a basket on the veranda. Suddenly we heard her crying, and going out on the veranda found that she was not there. Basket and all had disappeared. Then we looked up at a tree and there was an enormous baboon looking down at us, while with one hand he held the basket, which was resting on a branch. My father, however, knew what to do. He sent a servant at once to the bazaar, and in the meantime brought all of the fruit in the house and spread it on the floor of the veranda. The monkey shook his head, meaning that was not ransom enough for him. Very soon the servant returned with an enormous quantity of bananas. The baboon immediately came down, and it was remarkable how he brought down the basket without upsetting it.

My mother, all this while, was weeping silently, leaning against the door. But now her grief was turned to gladness, for lo, and behold, there was the baby asleep in the basket on the veranda, while the baboon sat on a pile of bananas giving a strange monkey call to other monkeys.

Scarcely had we taken the baby into the house and shut the glass doors of the veranda, when we heard monkeys hooting and calling from all directions, leaping from tree to tree and falling with a great thud on our roof. In ten minutes the veranda became a regular parliament of monkeys chattering over their dinners. After this we were very careful about the baby. Every time she was put out, a man or woman with a stick always watched over her.

We went by jewelers' shops where they were cutting diamonds, and stopped in front of the goldsmith's door. Seeing us wait there, the smith came out. "What do you want, do you want gold rings for your elephant's tusks?" You know they put rings on elephant's tusks as human beings put gold in their teeth.

"His tusks have just begun to sprout; they're too beautiful to spoil with rings yet," I answered.

"But my rings always make tusks more beautiful," was his retort.

I answered, "All the city folk think that what they do makes everything beautiful. Why don't they make their dirty city beautiful?"

The smith was angry. "If thou be not a buyer of gold, nor a vendor of silver, tarry not at my door; I have no time for beggars."

As we trotted off, I called back, "I do not sell silver, nor do I buy gold, but when my elephant grows up, he will have such tusks that you will cast eyes of envy on them. But this elephant will live more than one hundred and twenty-five years and thou shalt be dead by then, and so there will be no chance of soiling his ivory by buying thy gold."

We walked on very silently through the city, and then of a sudden a pack of dogs were upon us. We knew not whence they had come. Kari was as dignified as a mountain; he never noticed them, but the less attention he paid to them, the more audacious the dogs grew. They came after us and I did not know what to do, as I did not even have a stone to throw at them. In a few moments, we were hemmed in by packs of dogs. Quickly now, Kari turned round and in an instant lifted a dog into the air with his trunk. As the dog would have been dashed into bits, I yelled into his ear, "Brother, brother, do not kill him, but let him down gently, he will not bite you."

At this moment the dog gave such a terrible cry of pain as the trunk was coming down that Kari stopped and slowly brought him to the ground. The dog, however, was already dead; the pressure of the trunk had killed him, and the other dogs, seeing his fate, had already run away.

Kari walked rapidly out of the city and I was heart-sick. He went straight to the river bank and with great difficulty walked down the steps of the Ghaut and buried all except his trunk in the water. He stood there knowing that I knew that he had done something wrong and he was trying to cleanse himself of it. I, too, took my bath.

Late in the afternoon, we went back and found Kopee still sitting on the same tree and looking for us, as the caravan had left long ago. Judging by the banana peels under the trees, we realized he had had his dinner. Kari and I, however, were very hungry and we were both sick of the city. We did not want to see it again, so I called to the monkey to follow and urged the elephant to go on to the nearest forest. Kopee, with one leap, jumped on my neck as I sat on the elephant's back.

This ended Kari's expedition to the city. It is better for animals to be where the jungle is, for the jungle is sweeter and kinder than that wilderness of stones--the city.

THE JUNGLE SPIRIT

It took us much longer to return home. We lost nearly twenty-four hours in a jungle where we had the strangest experiences of our lives. We had already covered half the distance when one day at noon we reached the river across which lay the jungle. It was so hot that Kari would not go any further. The moment he smelled the moist earth of the river bank, he literally ran into the water and lay there. Kopee and I had to sit on his back, while the waves of the river played around us as the waves of the sea play around an island. Kari kept his trunk above the water, and when he moved we almost fell off his back. The monkey clung to me, for, as you know, monkeys do not know how to swim. There are two reasons why monkeys are afraid of the water; not only are they unable to swim because the fingers of their hands are not webbed together as are ducks' toes, but being accustomed to go through the air by leaping from branch to branch, they think that they should leap from place to place in the water.

Seeing that the elephant was wayward, I told Kopee to hold on to my head. Then I swam ashore and waited for the elephant to come out. Now that we were off his back, he raised himself a little above the water and began to draw vast quantities of water up his trunk and snorted it out at the monkey who was running up and down the shore, chattering fiercely and keeping at a safe distance to avoid being drenched.

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