“Sirs?” The poor policeman seemed baffled.
The owl Bhootoom vomited up what looked like a little pre-digested fur pellet on the man’s notebook, which he shook off with a grimace. At the same time, the monkey snapped, “The questions, my man! Ask the suspect the special questions!”
“Yes, sirs! Immediately, sirs!” The constable gave a quick salute, which the monkey returned.
“By the order of the magical banana,” the policeman solemnly intoned. Naya giggled a little from her hiding place, but it was me who was at the receiving end of the constable’s glare.
“As I was saying!” The man cleared his throat. “By the order of the magical banana, I will hereby ask the suspect the extra-special security questions.”
Extra-special security questions? I had barely made it past the password. How was I going to answer anything else?
The constable flipped through his notebook, until he found the page he was looking for. Reading one word per page, he asked me, “Why”—flip—“does”—flip—“a”—flip—“banana”—flip—“wear”—flip —“sunscreen?”
It took me a minute to even understand that the security question was in the form of a stupid joke about bananas. It didn’t take much imagination to realize why.
If I had any remaining doubts as to the joke’s origins, they all disappeared when the monkey captain started jumping around and waving his long arms. “Oo la la! Oo la loo! I know! I know! Hey, over here! Pickety pick pick me!”
“But, sir!” The constable looked embarrassed. “With all due respect, of course you know the answer! You wrote the question!”
In the excitement, the owl started flying around in circles. For whatever reason, he only seemed to be able to fly backward. Meanwhile, the monkey captain jumped from the rikshaw to the chain link of the fence and back again. Then he did an acrobatic swing-around so he was hanging, one-armed, from the side of the vehicle, his body halfway in the cabin with me.
“Why does a banana wear so much blinkin’ sunscreen?” Buddhu repeated, his hat and monocle now back on. “Because … because …” The monkey was laughing so hard he hardly could get the words out. “Because he peels!”
The policeman hid his annoyance by looking at the sky as the monkey dissolved in a fit of laughter, and the owl hooted in short bursts that sounded like giggles.
“Please, sirs! Do stop laughing!”
“We … we … can’t, yaar! That was a good one! Oh, the hardy to the har, har, har!” wheezed the monkey. I was having a hard time keeping a straight face myself, not so much at the joke, but at the animals’ reactions to it. Meanwhile, the constable looked downright pained.
“You know about my ailment, sir! The many tonics I am taking for it! The pills! The creams! The suppositories!” begged the policeman, and the monkey stopped, shamefaced.
“So blisteringly sorry, old chap. That was not very karmic of me. You know I always forget. I apologize, old man. Really.” Looking at me, Buddhu explained, “He is not allowed to laugh. Strict instructions by the doctor. It’s frightfully bad for his tibulooloo. And his right frontal uvulala. His patété too.” At a gesture by the owl to the constable’s throat, the monkey added, “Also, his nasoforeignix.”
I’m no doctor, but I wasn’t sure any of those things were actual body parts.
“I have a condition!” sniffed the constable. “And, sir, you have to let the suspect answer the question! We’ve talked about this before!”
“Correct! Indeed! You are utterly and most totally righty-ho-ho!” The monkey cleared his throat and climbed down off the rikshaw onto the ground. He bobbled his head a little left to right, losing a bit of his original accent. “Thik achhe. Thik achhe. Please, deep pranayama breaths, in and out through your nose. In for four, hold for four, out for four,” he said in a pseudo-deep Amber-the-community-center-yoga-teacher voice, demonstrating as he did so. “All right, then, carry on. Proceed.”
“How about this one? It’s much harder. That was just a warm-up anyway.” The constable gave me a hard stare, ignoring Buddhu’s advice about deep breathing. “Why”—flip—“are”—flip—“bananas”— flip—“never lonely?”
The answer was on the tip of my tongue, but an overexcited Captain Buddhu shouted out, “Because they love a good party!”
“Oh, Captain, my captain!” groaned the constable. The owl spit out another disgusting furball.
The monkey, who seemed to be chewing on one of the auto rikshaw pom-poms, snapped, “All righty! All righty! Don’t get your government-issued knickers in a bunch!” Then, to my annoyance, the military monkey swung himself onto my shoulder and started picking through my hair. But he had—maybe by mistake—told me the answer to the question.
“A banana is never lonely because they’re always in a …” I started, but Buddhu interrupted me with a loud laugh.
“I haven’t said the punch line yet!” I hissed.
“Arré, hurry up, then!” the monkey retorted. “What’s taking you so flimflamming long?”
Now the owl joined the monkey, and both animals were perched on my shoulders, picking through my hair.
I took a big breath, trying not to be irritated. “A banana is never lonely because they’re always in a bunch.”
“Lucky guess,” the policeman groused, even as the monkey collapsed in a fit of laughter, actually falling off my shoulder.
“In a bunch!” he snorted, rolling around and clutching at his stomach. “Oof! Orré baba! That’s a good one! In a bunch! Like his knickers!” His tiny claws digging into my shoulder, the owl squawked and flapped his wings as if laughing too.
“Sirs! I am prohibited from vocalizing my mirth! Think of my condition!” The constable’s face looked puffed and red, and even his eyes had begun to water, as if he was holding in a laugh with huge effort. “Just consider my cardiothorazine! Think of my duodenumnumnum!”
“Wait, wait! Please, at least one more question for the suspect!” The monkey Buddhu snorted from the dusty ground, where he was still laughing and wiping his eyes. “I’m worried she’s a security risk!”
It was obvious he wasn’t worried about any such thing and just wanted to hear another banana-related joke, but the constable had other ideas. Or maybe he just wanted to protect his internal organs from his laughing disease.
From the breast pocket of his uniform, the constable pulled out an even tinier notebook than the first. With a dramatic gesture, he turned the notebook toward me and began flipping through it. On each page was a badly drawn stick figure with crooked eyes, an off-center nose, and, from what I could tell, only one ear. But as the man flipped the pages, it looked like the stick figure was not just growing taller but also dancing.
“Very … uh … artistic!” I said. “I like how it looks like he’s moving.”
“My style is influenced by an artist from the 2-D dimension,” said the policeman as he kept flipping the pages. I could tell he was pleased.
“Oh, I know!” I remembered some pictures I’d seen in art class about a painter who put people’s eyes where their noses should be and stuff like that. “Picasso!”
“Ehhh!” The policeman made a sound like a buzzer. “No, it’s Van Gogh! Can’t you tell? That’s why there’s only one ear!”
I exchanged confused looks with Buddhu, wondering if this had something to do with the security question. The owl made a series of loud burbling noises. I was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep on my shoulder. I couldn’t help worrying if he’d poop while he was perched there.
Naya made a little sound from the back seat. The poor girl was probably melting.
“What did you say?” The constable fingered his handcuffs.
“I was just thinking how much I liked your artistic style!” I volunteered, wiping the beads of sweat trickling from my hair down my neck. “The symbolism! The metaphors! The, uh, earless-ness!”
The constable smoothed down his moustache with a pleased look. “All right, suspect, I will give you one more question to answe
r before we have to take you in for interrogation.” He turned on the monkey, who looked like he was about to say something. “And no, you cannot help her, sir! If you think she is a security risk, then it’s my duty to investigate!”
Buddhu gave me a little shrug and then sat right on my dashboard with his legs crossed and hands on his knees, first fingers and thumbs lightly touching. He started breathing deeply, and then making an Om noise.
“What are you doing?” I hissed at the meditating monkey.
“Achha, communing with your consciousness, yaar,” hissed the monkey back without opening his eyes. “So I can help you with the answer.”
I rolled my eyes. Half the time the monkey was all snotty and British, and half the time he was all one with the universe Mr. Yoga Butt. I didn’t get him at all, but then again, he was a talking monkey, so we were probably operating on a fairly un-understandable plane to begin with.
The constable cleared his throat and flipped through the notebook, making the stick figure dance again. “Brothers and sisters have I none, but this man’s father is my father’s son.”
“I couldn’t just answer another one about bananas?” I asked.
“This is your last chance, suspect,” barked the constable.
I snuck a look at the monkey, who still had his legs crossed but had somehow flipped into a headstand. He had one eye open and was hissing answers through the side of his mouth.
“A split! A pair of slippers! Apeeling!”
“It’s not about bananas!” I snapped.
“Aw, blast and blimey!”
“Sir, please!” said the indignant constable. “You must let the suspect answer the security question alone!”
I thought carefully about the policeman’s question, wondering if I’d heard this one from Niko before, or read it in one of his books. I didn’t think so. I’d have to try to logic it out myself. He had no brothers or sisters, so he was an only child. Okay. So, the stick person in the moving pictures’ father was the constable’s father’s son? Was this one of those riddles where the answer was that the surgeon was his mother? No, that didn’t really make sense. I bit my lip, thinking through what this family tree might look like. And then it came to me.
“That’s your son!”
For a tense moment, the policeman consulted his larger notebook, flipping it this way and that.
“She’s right, boyo! She’s right, old chap!” Buddhu the monkey jumped up from meditating now to assume his bossy upper-crusty voice. Bhootoom the owl woke up and hooted. “I recognized little junior constable sahib right away!” Buddhu went on. “Blimey, that one ear! The posh clothes! The fly dance moves! Absolute, blinkin’ genius!”
The constable looked pained. “My son has two ears, sir. This was artistic license.”
“Of course, it blingety-blangety was! Artistic license! Also, artistic credit card! And artistic bill fold! Artistic loose change!”
I gave the monkey a jab with my elbow and he stopped blathering.
The constable gave a harrumph and then saluted. “Fine. You pass. I will escort you through the gate and into the registration office.”
“No worries, ’enry ’iggins! No need to get chuffed, guv’nor! I got it sorted!” Captain Buddhu jumped onto my motorbike handles, while the owl Bhootoom dug his claws uncomfortably into my left shoulder. “I’ve still got some more questions for this contestant—er, spy—er, suspect! I think I’ll take her to the cotton swab room after all!”
The monkey gave me a little wink, and I wished he’d be less obvious. Luckily, the constable didn’t notice, as he was still stuck in a salute, looking pained.
“Don’t you have to tell him ‘at ease’ or something?” I whispered.
“Arré, right on. Thanks, yaar.” The monkey returned the constable’s salute, and the poor policeman could finally put down his hand. Before I could reach for it, Buddhu pushed the rikshaw’s start button with his tail, and the engine turned over.
The police constable began opening the chain link fence’s many locks. Some were opened by keys he wore on a giant chain hooked to his pocket. Others were combinations, which he opened after mumbling the numbers to himself, like a little kid who can’t read without moving his lips. Finally, the constable seemed to be looking around in the dry meadow grass for something. After a couple failed attempts, he reached out and grabbed something small and striped and buzzing. A bee!
“Got you!” yelled the policeman before ripping off one of the bee’s little wings. I shrieked. But not as loud as the bee, which screamed with a bloodcurdling yell that sounded more like a hairy beast than an insect.
Naya gave a little yelp. The bee, with its full-throated, monstrous voice, cried and wailed.
The policeman inserted the bee’s almost-see-through wing to open the last, slot-like lock on the fence. He then swung open the gate with a clang. I shuddered as the poor bee kept screaming. I didn’t like bees. In fact, I’d always hated them, and I was even more freaked out by them after the Rakkhoshi Rani started showing up in my bedroom with the buzzing creatures. But no one deserved to suffer like that. Naya seemed to feel the same way, because she kept up a low whining in the back seat.
“By the order of the magical banana, get a blingety-blangety move on!” hissed the monkey. And so, I drove the auto rikshaw slowly through the open gate, only to have it clang shut behind us again. As we drove, I realized there wasn’t one fence but a whole bunch of barbed-wire-topped fences around the registration office. There were cameras on top of every one, and at first, I thought I was imagining it, but the camera lenses swiveled, following us as we drove by. It was seriously creepy.
As I puttered along, the monkey whispered in my ear, “Be cool, Princess Kiranmala, we’re just taking a little detour before the cameras are on you all the time.”
“But how do you know who I …” I began, but the monkey put up a hairy hand, directing me away from the registration office rather than toward it.
“My brother Bhootoom and I have been waiting for you for weeks, Princess. We even took these spiritually bankrupt jobs in the registration office so we’d spot you first.”
“Wait. What?” I put on the brakes, then shifted in my seat to stare at the monkey on my shoulder, and the owl now on his shoulder. Both animals blinked back at me.
“Keep going! Stop attracting so much attention.” The monkey put his hat at a jaunty angle, balanced his goofy monocle against one eye, then leaned out of the auto rikshaw, waving and smiling at the cameras. “Arré, yaar, do you want to save our big brother Neel or not?”
You can’t be Neel’s brothers!” I blurted out. Conscious of the cameras, I did my best to keep the auto rikshaw put-putting unsuspiciously along.
“We are all brothers and sisters, are we not?” Buddhu said in his fake yoga-teacher voice, directing me away from the registration building rather than toward it.
“I didn’t think that’s what you meant,” I said as I turned down the main street of the market.
“You’re right, it isn’t,” the monkey agreed, doing some kind of one-leg-in-the-air downward dog on the dashboard. “We’re his actual brothers.”
“So, explain,” I demanded. “How exactly are you both related to Neel and Lal?”
“Squawk!” The tiny owl blinked at me a little creepily right before barfing out a nasty little furry pellet onto my lap. Yuck. I shook it off as quick as I could, sending the rikshaw jerkily back and forth as I did.
“Well, when the Raja wasn’t having any heirs, he called upon a rishi, one of those sadhu-sanyasi guys who meditates on the mountaintop and knows all sorts of magic shajik.”
As we drove on through the bazaar, Buddhu directing me down a few smaller alleys, I was amazed at how empty it was. The last time I’d been here, the market had been a chaotic but joyful place, overloaded with flower merchants and bangle sellers, jostling pedestrians and on-foot rikshaw wallahs seeking customers. Now it seemed practically deserted. We made a quick stop by a lone roadside green coconut
vendor. I slurped the refreshing coconut water greedily through a straw, balancing the awkward nut in my lap as I drove on.
“So, anyhoo, this guy gave the ranis a super-magical fertility root to share so they would all have babies,” Buddhu said as he slurped his own coconut.
This story sounded familiar. I felt like Baba had told it to me before, or at least a story very much like it.
“Anyway, the two youngest queens were majorly ripped off. They only gave them the leftovers—the ekdum dregs at the bottom of the bowl after everyone else ate more than their share. This was not very Yogic of them. You know, yaar, we all have to be the love we want to see in the universe.”
We were far away from the gate now, so Buddhu took off his monocle and fancy jacket, revealing a tie-dye kurta with a peace sign in the middle. He put his galleon hat away too in favor of an embroidered square cap, which he wore at a jaunty angle across one ear. Across his chest he wore a hand-stitched cloth jhola—a bag in which he now shoved his other costume, as well as his banana-handled cane. Bhootoom, who’d fallen asleep while perched on the auto-rikshaw horn, kept his monocle on.
Buddhu the monkey continued, in much more laid-back tones, “Schmanyhoo, everyone else got healthy human—or half rakkhosh—kiddos except my mom and my brother Bhootoom’s mom—the two youngest queens. Typical inter-rani fighting, yaar.”
“Yeah, I’ve met your stepmoms. They’re really special.”
“Full of charm and sharm, amirite?” laughed the monkey. “They banished us from the palace right when we were born. Didn’t want animal-shanimal types around, I guess. Despite the fact we can do the most awesome things like this.”
Game of Stars Page 9
