The Boy Who Turned Into A Monkey: Folktale from India

Once upon a time there was a boy in a village whose mother had died when he was young. After some time, the father married again in order to have a helpmate for himself a well as to provide a mother for his young son.

But unfortunately for the little boy, the stepmother took an intense dislike to the boy from the very beginning and began to ill- treat him. She assigned him difficult chores hut gave him very little food, which was also inferior in quality. But most of this went unobserved by the father who was almost always away at his paddy field far away from home. And though, sometimes, he detected signs of unhappiness in his son, he soon forgot to ask his son because the woman was cunning and he was completely under her charm and domination.

 

(The Ao-Naga tribe of Nagaland have always practised the shifting form of cultivation. According to the cycle, a farmer maintains two fields, the previous year’s field where he grows mainly rice and the current year’s field where, besides rice, he grows an assortment of fruits and vegetables also. The harvesting seasons of the two fields are also different. The rice in the old field, having been sown earlier, ripens earlier than the rice in the new one.)

 

This particular farmer also had two fields. In the new one, besides rice, he grew pumpkins, cucumbers, maize, arum and various other fruits as well. But his crop was relentlessly ravaged by a pack of monkeys which ate up not only the fruits and vegetables but also the stalks of the young rice plants.

 

In order to save the crop in the new fields, the farmer decided to send his son to chase away the monkeys from the new field while he went to harvest the ripening rice in the old one. The son had to go to the field very early in the morning and came home late at night because the monkeys chose the hours before the arrival and after the departure of the farmers to depredate the crops. The boy really had a difficult job to perform but he did it sincerely.

 

The stepmother had never shown any kindness to the boy and now she started to give him even less food than before. For his morning meal, he was given a little cold rice with no curry at all. But for his mid-day meal, she wrapped a few lumps of rotten rice in a leaf. When the boy found that the rice in the leaf-tiffin was unfit for consumption, he threw it away and ate the fruits and vegetables from the field itself. This went on for a number of days and the mound of rotten rice in a corner of the farm house began to grow bigger.

 

As days went by with this unvarying pattern of treatment from his stepmother, the boy decided that there was no need to walk those long miles of rough road back home for a few lumps of cold rice and no curry. It was merely a waste of time and energy. And so he began to spend the nights as well in the farm house itself, subsisting on the maize and vegetables growing in the field.

 

In the meantime, the father too was busy harvesting his old field singlehanded. He used to start for the field very early in the morning and come back home late at night only carrying heavy loads of paddy on his back. He had little time to ask about his son’s work and simply rook it for granted that all was well with him.

 

But when the harvest in the old field was over, he turned his attention to the new field and began to enquire about his son’s work. He was told that the son had not come home for many days now. (This in itself is not unusual, because when there is much work to be done in the fields, the farmers spend the night in the farm house in order to save precious time spent on commuting to and from the village.)

 

The father decided to check on his son and set out to the new field very early the next morning. On reaching the field, he looked out for his son but there was no sign of him anywhere. As he looked around the farm house, he discovered the mound of rotten rice left by his son. He now began to realise that something had gone terribly wrong with his son. Thinking that he might be somewhere in the field the farmer began to call out loudly for his son, “Dear son, where are you? I am your father, come to relieve you. Come to your father, my dear son”.

 

But there was no response from his son. To his great surprise a monkey which was sitting on a log near the farm house began to respond to his call. Though he looked like a monkey, there were still traces of his human form and voice which made the father realise that he was no ordinary monkey. He at once knew that it was his son who was gradually transforming into a monkey and he became terribly saddened at this turn of events. He shed bitter tears of remorse when he realised that it was because the boy had gone too long without proper meals and had been living on fruits and vegetables alone that he was undergoing this strange transformation. As he was not warmed by the fire at the hearth, fur began to develop on his body and he was now almost transformed into a monkey.

 

Seeing the mound of rotten rice, he was convinced that it was his wife who was responsible for what had happened to his son. In this, he too was betrayed by her, and once again he wept for the loss of his son.

 

Before leaving the field, he turned to his son who was now becoming a monkey and said, “Since you find it impossible to return to your human form, I am leaving you here along with the other monkeys. You may eat all the fruits and vegetables you like. Among the rice stalks those in the far corner are sweeter because they are special sticky rice plants. You may eat this particular type of rice plants.” With these parting words, the sad man left his son to join the group of monkeys as one of them.

 

(To this day, the Ao Naga tribe claim, because of the father’s last words to his son, monkeys can distinguish this variety of rice from the ordinary one and relish eating it first).

 

The father, after bidding farewell to his son, returned home utterly dejected and broken hearted. He accused his wife of cruel treatment toward his son and on this ground; he divorced her and drove her way from his home. He lived alone with his grief and died a broken old man for having lost his only son in this manner.