I have a scrap of black plastic that I'm going to take back with me to Canada as a trophy. It marks my triumph over a monkey.

We went to the Swayambha Mandir today, popularly known as the "Monkey Temple", because there's a bunch of monkeys all over it. Whatever you've heard about monkeys it's best to forget until you're actually close to one. Walking up you don't notice them until about halfway up the 365 stairs, and then they're by the side of the stairways and in the bushes besides. They're pretty much the best animals to just sit and watch.

I noticed two sitting on a step and scratching each other's backs, and decided to toss a couple of flower petals at them, I don't know why. I guess they're used to people throwing pretty bad things at them because they both scrambled backwards and stared at me. One of them couldn't let this insult go by, jumped back up and bared his teeth, getting ready to jump. I was panicking for a second that I'd have to have a punch-up with a monkey on the temple steps, then remembered "Hey, wait, this guy is actually pretty titchy" and just, I don't know, did that gesture that humans and monkeys both do when they want to fight, sort of throwing the shoulders forward. The monkey all but backflipped back into the bushes and retired to stare at me. I guess a lot of fights are resolved like that. That's not how I got the black plastic, though.

We made it up to the temple and walked around. It seems like it's half a temple, half a small town up there - there's accomodations for the monks, plus places for tourists to stay, plus restaurants and houses for the people working there, etc. The centerpiece is a huge dome stupa (look it up) with the eyes of Buddha painted on the top staring out over all of Kathmandu, which you can see from the viewpoint there. Besides that there's small stalls and shops, and an old monastery, and tons of smaller stupas, and crawling over it all are brown-furred monkeys. There are several types of monkey:

Grasshoppers: Little monkeys about the length of your forearm with wrinkly faces, hanging off their parents or getting whacked around by the bigger monkeys. No matter how much you want to give them a date or some seeds, they'll always lose out to:

Vicious Little Swearwords: These are guys who know what they want, which is whatever you're giving them and more, if you please. If you hold out a handful of grains they'll pick some out like they're going to take them peacefully, then smack your hand so that you drop them all over. If you flip or jump back, they'll immediately flip and jump back and start snarling at you. Come to think of it, a lot of the monkeys fall into this category. They'll start fights with anybody, including:

Old Farts: These are more wrinkly-faced, whiter-haired monkeys, who generally watch everything and don't crawl about as much. They're either protecting the smaller monkeys or picking things out of each other's fur. Old Farts are also often:

Bears: These guys are big and furry. That's all. Nobody messes with them and you generally try to not attract their attention. The shopkeepers and monks try to drive away the monkeys when they scrabble through garbage or climb over Buddha, but somehow you can't imagine them trying it with the bears.

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Now, the black piece of plastic. We were having a time of it with some terrible dates that I had bought in Gangtok and never eaten. I was worried at first about the monkeys choking on the pits, but I stopped worrying after the first monkey popped the whole dealie into his month, chewed for a while, then spat out a smooth pit about three feet away. It's really neat holding it out to the monkey and having him take it from you with a warm little hand, although the VLSes can make you feel sort of wary of teeth and nails.

After a while I ran out of dates, and a guy gave me a handful of corn that you could either scatter on the ground for them to pick up one at a time, or hold out in your hand and have them grab as many as they could swallow. We figured that we wanted to stay up there a little longer (it's incredibly peaceful) and bought ten rupees worth of seeds from a vendor. We poured them into a black plastic bag (here it comes) and walked off to the railing to hand some to the monkeys.

Kian, since he paid for it, decided to hold the bag and we were all happily sprinkling and giving seeds, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed an Old Fart sidling closer to Kian. Just as he reached out a hand for the bag I yelled "Kian!" and waved a foot at him(the monkey, not the brother). Kian spins around just in time to see the guy jumping away (they can really jump), and in a motion that makes perfect sense, holds the bag away from him while shaking a fist at the monkey. Holding the bag, in fact, behind him. Where the VLS sitting there on the rail is only too happy to do the job that the Old Fart has fumbled. Kian, I guess, feels a tug on the bag too late and pulls away from him, scattering the seeds onto the ground all over.

Well, it's not any skin off my back, and we were going to give it all to the monkeys anyhow, but I still feel sort of cheated, and as we walk away I can't help but notice that the VLS still has most of the bag and is going through it, looking for seeds. In fact he's got his back to me, and so... I grab the bag, and he shrieks like a dog who's had someone step on his tail, and does the exact same thing as Kian, leaving me with a shred of black plastic which I will cherish forever, because I stole it from a monkey. It's the thought that counts.

Anyways, whatever you think about monkeys, let me tell you - they're nothing so much as just simpler human beings. They want to do the exact same things, they're just not so subtle about it all. I love them.

-Bashu