by Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD
Yesterday morning I had a most unexpected visitor, Rangaswamy, at my consulting room. He had come all the way from his native place, Banavara near Arsikere to see me with his young son who had not been feeling too well for the past few weeks. This very small built, ever-smiling man is an itinerant seller of kitchen utensils who goes about from village to village on his rickety and always over-loaded moped from dawn to dusk. But that is not his main job and what he is good at most. It is what he does when he is not selling utensils that makes him unusual.
Rangaswamy is a professional monkey-catcher, much in demand and it is in this unusual calling that his talents and ability stand out most. I first met him nearly two decades ago when he became a sensation with his skills in the town of Kollegal where I used to then practice. I still have a weekly outreach clinic there. The town used to be plagued by a herd of more than a hundred monkeys that used to pillage and plunder the crop in all the coconut and fruit trees in addition to harassing citizens on the streets by jumping on them and snatching away anything edible.
No child could walk home from the neighbourhood shop with an ice-cream stick or a packet of chips and no housewife could walk home safely with her daily purchase of vegetables or groceries. And, because the monkeys loved to play with all the clothes that used to be put out for drying I am not too sure whether the womenfolk there had evolved a laundry sorting service in their respective neighbourhoods, not unlike the postal department, to exchange their misplaced and interchanged clothes! I do not know who gave them the idea but one day the town municipal authorities who were under tremendous pressure to do something about the problem decided to rope in Rangaswamy.
He arrived on the scene with his wife and started a two-day survey of the town and the magnitude of its problem before getting down to work. And when he got down to work it was all child’s play for him. In just a week’s time he had all the rouges, big and small, dancing and prancing to his tunes but now safely behind the bars of a large cage from where they could do no harm. The much relieved municipal authorities would then pack their tormentors off in batches by truck to be let off in the distant forests of Malai Mahadeshwara Hills. Since Rangaswamy used to always be on the rooftops with his magic traps while at work, I could not see his handiwork at close quarters although I was tempted at times to follow him and learn the basics of his art.
Strangely, I have always been and I still am fascinated by anything that can be called ‘monkey business’! But on the terraces and rooftops, Rangaswamy seemed as agile as any monkey and unfortunately this was not my forte. But I used to always discuss his exploits and achievements at his every visit to my clinic and he would tell me all about himself and his art with great enthusiasm. I would always tease him that the monkeys were attracted to him because he looked exactly like one of them which is what made his job easy for him. He would say “Yaay hoogi swamy, neevu sari” and break into a shy grin.
But very strangely, yesterday, although I tried very hard I could not get my friend to smile for his photograph. If you happen to see even a wee bit of a smile on his face here it is largely due to your imagination. I would get to spend some time with him unfailingly at the end of each day of his stay in Kollegal because his newly married wife happened to be a bit hypochondriac and he happened to be a very caring and affectionate husband, not unlike me.
He would wait patiently for the crowd of patients to melt away before bringing her into my consulting room. She would have some complaint or the other for which I would prescribe a new and different looking placebo that would satisfy both husband and wife immensely but just for the next twenty-four hours. The next evening they would be back and the lady would narrate a different set of symptoms for which I would evolve a different remedy.
But taking pity on the poor and hapless man I decided to cure her permanently before they left Kollegal. And, I did it too by resorting to a rather drastic but ridiculously simple trick for which Rangaswamy pledged his lifetime gratitude before leaving. I told her that she would soon find her husband going in for a second wife if she did not stop complaining about her minor aches and pains and this unusual treatment seems to have worked wonders. Rangaswamy yesterday told me that his wife who has borne him two sons after our last meeting now dreads going to doctors and that is why this time he had come to see me without her! In case you have a monkey problem, you can contact Rangaswamy on Mob: 9972146839. And, in case you have a hypochondriac wife, you can contact me!
e-mail: kjnmysore@rediffmail.com
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Feature Articles / by Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD / June 06th, 2014