Professor Shrestha, there’s a mistake, she said after class. I asked to work with birds, not monkeys. “I hate monkeys.”
He looked up over his glasses, calm as ever. “There’s no mistake. Dr. Arun has space in his primate research team. It’s a great opportunity.”
But monkeys… Priya drifted off, already feeling her chest tighten.
“You can’t avoid your biases forever, Priya. Go see them properly. Observe.”
“Biases.” She chewed on the word all the way home.
Hate is a strong word, Priya’s mother used to say, usually with raised brows. But Priya had meant it.
She was five when she first declared it. Her tiny hand clutched her mother’s sari as they walked through the temple courtyard, where monkeys lounged like royalty with arrogance. One of them snatched a banana from a devotee, and flung the peel at Priya. Another pulled her hair. She cried. Her mother bent down, wiping her tears. “They’re just animals, darling. They don’t know any better.”
But Priya didn’t care if they knew better or not. In her mind, they were villains with fur. Since then, it became a set rule in Priya’s life: monkeys are chaotic, mean, and definitely not to be trusted
As she grew older, she learned to avoid them the way one might avoid an ex at a wedding. Her friends called it silly. “They’re just animals,” they said. Priya didn’t argue. Her hate was deep, rooted not just in fear, but in the childish injustice of being targeted.
It would have stayed that way, comfortably dormant, if not for that high school field trip to the zoo.
She had wandered around the zoo half heartedly glancing at the various monkeys swinging from ropes. But then, her attention was caught by one chimp, sitting quietly at the edge of a tree. It was large with deep brown eyes.
She watched as the chimp reached for a banana, his fingers slowly peeling the yellow fruit, only for it to slip from his hand and fall to the ground. The chimp stood there and stared at the banana, its expression sad and helpless. It was almost human in its disappointment. Priya could almost feel the chimp’s sadness.
She’d never seen an animal (MONKEY) react so vulnerable before. Something in Priya’s heart shifted. She saw, not a carefree animal but a creature capable of experiencing something real.
By the time she was in college, the hatred had settled but only into avoidance. Monkeys again were something she wasn’t a big fan of.
So when that email arrived, offering her a three-month field internship at the Nagarjun Forest Reserve under Dr. Arun, a renowned primatologist, her first instinct was disbelief. She had specifically requested the avian project.
And that brought her to Professor Shrestha’s office, trying to negotiate her way out of what felt like a personal betrayal by the universe.
But he had looked at her with a kind of stern kindness. “You can’t avoid your biases forever, Priya. Go see them properly. Observe.”
She didn’t want to, but she decided to go.
The forest was louder than she expected. Insects buzzed in constant rhythm, and birds were singing loudly overhead. The Assamese Monkeys were everywhere, leaping through trees and running across branches. They screamed, hooted, screeched, yawned, and stared. Priya pulled back every time one came near.
“You’re jumpy,” said Arun, noticing.
“I had a traumatic monkey experience when I was five,” she replied, half-joking, half-serious.
Arun laughed at Priya, “fair enough” he said. “But give them time. They’re more like us than you think.”
She didn’t believe that until she met Luna.
Luna was quiet, unlike the rest. She had a crooked tail and a patch of missing fur on her shoulder. Priya first noticed her sitting away from the others, watching the team with an unsettling human kind of interest.
“She’s solitary,” Arun explained. We think she fell from a tree when she was still a baby. Doesn’t like crowds.
Priya found herself near Luna often, sketching her, taking notes.
Over time, Luna began to approach. She mimicked Priya’s actions, scratching her head when Priya did, folding her arms, tilting her head in sync. She didn’t steal food. She didn’t shriek.
“Hi, Luna,” Priya would say each morning, leaving a banana near the edge of the research station’s platform. Luna would take it, retreat, and eat.
Their silent routine comforted Priya. It was the first time she saw a monkey not as a chaos, but as something whole, something gentle.
Then one night, everything shifted.
She fell asleep under her mosquito net, exhausted from the heat and data entry. In her dream, she was standing in the middle of the forest, but it felt wrong, too quiet, too still. The trees shimmered like they were made of glass. The sky was purple.
And the monkeys were sitting in a perfect circle, facing her. Luna was in the center.
“Welcome,” she said, clearly, in a soft voice that carried the weight of understanding.
“You can talk?” Priya asked.
“We’ve always talked,” said another monkey to her left. “You just never listened.”
Priya blinked in disbelief. “What is this?”
“A dream,” Luna said. “And you needed one.”
Priya looked around. The monkeys weren’t screeching or climbing. They sat with backs straight, calm, observant.
“We’ve seen your kind for centuries,” Luna continued. “Rushing. Building. Destroying. You climb like us, but not to see, only to get ahead. You gather food, but it costs you your life.”
“What do you mean?” Priya whispered.
A gray-haired monkey stood up. His eyes looked ancient. “We pity you.”
“Pity me?”
“Not you alone,” he said. “All humans. You chase things. You sit in boxes, click at screens. You think you’re free because you built your own jungle. But you’re trapped.”
Luna looked at her. “You work all day just to afford to eat.” “That’s… how life works.”
“No,” Luna said gently. “That’s how you were taught how life works.”
“But we humans have responsibilities. We can’t just sit in trees and eat bananas all day.”
“Why not?”
Priya opened her mouth. Then she closed it.
Luna walked up to her. “Do you love what you do?” “I don’t know yet,” she said honestly.
“Then you must learn to ask questions. Even about the things you think you already know.”
The monkeys began to fade into mist. Luna was the last to vanish. As she disappeared, she whispered, We only threw things at you because you never really saw us. Now, maybe you do.
Priya woke with a start, the net above her trembling slightly from a passing breeze. Outside, the forest was still. Real. Green and alive.
She sat up, heart pounding. The dream had left something behind, a shift in heart. The second shift she felt in a long time.
She reached for her notebook, but paused. The thought pressed heavier than ink: Am I really free?
Her life, the deadlines, the expectations, the careful plans, suddenly felt like layers of a costume she’d worn for so long, she forgot it wasn’t her skin. All the classes, the internships, the goals. Who decided they were hers?
Priya let out a breath. “You were right, Luna,” she whispered. “I do feel trapped sometimes. I’m always trying to meet expectations, be the perfect student, the perfect daughter, a perfect friend, get the right job, and make everyone proud.”
She pressed a hand to her chest and exhaled. She realized she wasn’t really living for herself, but for everyone around her.
“There are so many rules. What to study, how to act, what success should look like. It’s like I’ve been walking a path someone else planned for me.”
She looked down at her hands, then back at the forest.
“I didn’t even stop to ask if it was what I wanted. Maybe… maybe I can learn something from you.”
Later that morning, she returned to the clearing where Luna liked to sit. The Assamese monkey was already there, chewing slowly on a guava. She looked up as Priya approached and blinked, as if waiting.
“I had a weird dream,” Priya said, crouching down. “You talked. You told me humans were trapped.”
That’s when Priya smiled and said softly “Maybe hate is a strong word.”
