Monkey-chan

Teaching what it means to be human through tales of a naughty monkey

Some time ago, I had to add a new genre to my storytelling quiver – children's stories. My daughter loves stories, so I started making my own, but it was a slow and grinding effort to make them work.

In the beginning, I tried telling stories about a baby elephant called 'Arikomban' (the rice-eating tusker) 'anakkutty' (baby elephant), son of the famed Arikomban, a real elephant who was all over the news in Kerala about a year ago. I have a distant memory of my dad telling me stories

about a baby elephant called Manikandan, so it seemed like a good fit.

I thought it was a good effort – my headliner story had Arikomban Anakkutty getting hungry and getting help from a cat, a dog and a crow to steal rice from a 'chayakada' (tea shop), but I struggled to continue the series after a while. I discovered a rather weird problem – if I didn't like my own story much, I would fall asleep while telling it, instead of my daughter, who only grew angry.

I had a tough but good audience – eager to listen, but demanding and impatient. "Storrrrryyy!" she would scream, and put me on the spot with about 10 seconds to start. Combine that with my own sleepiness, and I had to find something that worked fast.

After a while, I struck gold with a true story about a monkey that sneaked into our old apartment when I went downstairs in the middle of breakfast to hand over my car to a mechanic. I got back and found idli and sambhar over my sofa, and to add insult to injury, the animal had peed on the dining table leg too. It’s hard to forget cleaning that up, but my daughter loved the story and started asking for more.

Every night, I had to invent a new story about a monkey, till over time, it became a character – 'Monkey-chan' (chan is an endearing suffix to many names in Kerala – Thomachan, Kuriachan, etc.). I found that I didn't fall asleep when regaling tales of the naughty Monkey-chan, because it allowed me to add layers to the story for my own entertainment.

You see, Monkey-chan lives in an imaginary tree near our apartment with his dad and mum, goes to a play-school for monkeys in another tree, and busts into our house nearly every day because he doesn't understand insane concepts like property rights.

One of the early conflicts between me and Monkey-chan was about whether he could play with his friends in our house when we were not there. He argued that in his tree, if they are not sitting on a branch, someone else can, and it was rather stupid for us to insist no one else use it when we are not – did I mention he talks?

Our families live parallel lives. My wife and I go to work, and Monkey-chan’s parents go to work plucking bananas to feed their kids. Monkey-chan often sneaks into our car or a backpack to hitch an illegal ride to a cinema or restaurant, and he doesn't understand why people make a big fuss about a monkey out sightseeing. One time, we go to a movie, and there's a whole sequence about whether he's allowed in or not. Does he need a ticket if he can hang from the ceiling instead of sit? Even if he has a ticket, can he enter? Show me what part of the terms and conditions forbid a monkey watching a movie. In these stories, we are usually arguing both with Monkeychan and with closed-minded humans.

My daughter loves the stories. Monkey-chan is practically a part of her life, and her soft toys: Orange Kitta – a cat, Grey Kitta (another cat she decided is Orange Kitta's daughter), and Panda, who is very strong (he knows Kung-fu) are recurring characters, foiling Monkey-chan’s naughty rampages and saving her toys, our TV, curtains and so on. If I scold her for something, she now asks for a Monkey-chan story in which he did whatever she was accused of doing. Turns out these are good opportunities to impart some moral lessons with backstories.

Sometimes I've seen her looking out the window, deep in thought, and when I asked what she’s thinking about, she says Monkey-chan. But she fully understands he's not real, or at least, not real to the rest of the world.

I think I've learned quite a bit about storytelling from the Monkey-chan saga. For starters, my original Arikomban stories were too complicated – too many moving parts, characters. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the thematic focus and small world of Monkey-chan works wonders. Not to mention it lets me have a little fun poking at the absurdities of modern life.

But most importantly, I've learned that you need to just iterate and try different things in storytelling or writing, instead of picking an imaginary horse and trying to make it win a race. Which is why I'm writing this piece in this newsletter.

I don't know where this is going, but maybe it will figure itself out.