08 - Mythology: Crocodile and Monkey

The Crocodile and The Monkey

By Vikram Seth

‘On the Ganga’s greenest isle

Lived Kuroop the crocodile:

Greeny-brown with gentle grin,

Stubby legs and scaly skin,

He would view with tepid eyes

Prey below a certain size –

But when a substantial dish

-Dolphin, turtle, fatter fish –

Swam across his field of view,

He would test the water too.

Out he’d glide, a floating log,

Silent as a polliwog –

Nearer, nearer, till his prey

Swam a single length away;

Then he’d lunge with smiling head,

Grab, and snap, and rip it dead –

Then (prime pleasure of his life)

Drag the carcass to his wife,

Lay it humbly at her feet,

Eat a bit, and watch her eat.

All along the river-bank

Mango trees stood rank on rank,

And his monkey friend would throw

To his as he swam below

Mangoes gold and ripe and sweet

As a special summer treat.

“Crocodile, your wife, I know

Hungers after mangoes so

That she’d pine and weep and swoon,

Mango-less in burning June”

Then Kuroop the crocodile,

Gazing upwards with a smile,

Thus addressed his monkey friend:

“Dearest monkey, in the end,

Not the fruit, but your sweet love,

Showered on us from above,

Constant through the changing years,

Slakes her griefs and dries her tears.”

(This was only partly true.

She liked love, and mangoes too.)…’