Simian Shenanigans

Monday morning, 7:00 AM- The alarm goes off, crash-landing the wonderful dreams I have been flying on in the scientifically best possible state of sleep (the REM sleep which occurs only in the morning, now one knows what early risers miss!). I struggle to drag my stubborn body and press the snooze button before hitting the sack again. Away from home for some time now, dreams of basking in that mellow warmth and comfort flit in and out of mind …7:10 AM- The alarm goes off again, only this time I do get up, as unsteady as an elephant on a tightrope. I open the door with the woolgathering expectation of seeing a family member at the door trying to wake me up. Reality strikes me hard. It is a relative, all right, albeit a simian one nibbling at the clothes I had laboriously washed yesterday and hung up on the line. I get a vicious snarl from the monkey and I get a feeling I have something in store for me that day.
Having got used to a bit of ‘monkey’ness on the corridor, I mutter a few curses at them and head for the eponymous bogs (short for ‘Bathrooms Of Graduate Students’). And before I have the opportunity to shake the sandman off by splashing water over my face, I am forced to wonder if those who coined the word for that dank and malodorous place by some rare foresight made sure it expands as ‘Bathrooms Of Grouchy Simians’ as well. The place has been ransacked! For some inconceivably gross reason perhaps, the pisspots seem to be their favorite haunt in the bogs.
Somehow I get by all that mayhem and finish my ablutions. But now that my senses are fully awake, the corridor stares at me in gastronomical glory. Every single remnant of food consumed in the wing and consigned to the dustbin is there for me to see. Quite often I wondered if these creatures were conducting some sort of survey of food habits of uncooperative IITM hostellers. At any rate, I do know how many packets of Lays my neighbor has munched on, how many pizzas were ordered recently in the wing, what’s hot on the Marrybrown menu and all those little bits of info not easily obtained unless I were a professional ragpicker.
Wait a minute; was there a heated discussion on the deleterious effects of pornography on the denizens of this prestigious institute? Well, up here on wide open spaces of the third floor you see simian fornication on a scale that would have made a Heiros Gamos pale in comparison. No wonder their tribe is growing!
There is an aphorism from the scriptures preaching universal brotherhood. Willy-nilly we are forced to practise it sharing our drinking water (yes, this is not spared either!) and food and even bathrooms with our cerebrally less privileged simian visitors. However, Benjamin Franklin hit the nail on the head when he said, “Fish and visitors smell in three days”. Only he probably should have used monkeys instead.