Filter Coffee #076
On Getting The Monkey Off Your Back
Dear Readers, thank you for your appreciation of FC #75 on ‘Diamond in the Rough’.
Latha Ambat tells me that the diamond-in-the-rough Rajnikant acted in the English movie ‘Blood Stone’, which was all about a priceless ruby.
Damandeep says, “We shy away from recognising the diamonds in the rough most of the time! It’s like you realise you lost the diamond after you have lost it! So this definitely is a reminder to me not to fail to notice or ignore the diamonds in the rough.”
Most readers have urged me to continue writing, at least until FC 100. For now. I accept that with trepidation.
On December 12, 1968, Arthur Ashe became the 1st black player to be ranked #1 in tennis.
🐒 Get That Monkey Off Your Back:
When we were very young, we were fascinated by a monthly Kannada magazine called ‘Chandamama’, which carried a series of stories about Raja Vikrama and Betala.
These always involved storytelling by the Betala and ended with a question posed by it. If the Raja knew the answer, he must give it and in the process break his silence, causing the Betala to go back to the tree from where it was hanging. Many years later, from 1985-86, these stories became a TV serial called ‘Vikram aur betaal’ featuring Arun Govil as Vikram and Sajjan as Betaal. It was quite a hit. If you are interested in the story, there’s a nice synopsis available on Wiki and I recommend you read it using this link. You can also watch the TV serial by following this link.
Another somewhat similar story is that of Sinbad The Sailor and his encounter with the monstrous Old Man of the Sea, who tricked many a traveller into letting him ride on his shoulders while they transported him across a stream. However, the Old Man would then not release his grip, forcing his victim to transport him wherever he pleased and allowing them little rest. The Old Man's victims all eventually died of this miserable treatment, but Sinbad, after getting the Old Man drunk on wine, was able to shake him off his back and kill him. You can watch and share this classic tale here:
Later on in life, when I came across the phrase ‘monkey on my back’, I could relate this idiom to what both Raja Vikram and Sinbad went through. Apparently, way back in the 1860s, the idiom was used to describe someone who was very angry but later, towards the 1930s, it came to be used to describe someone addicted to drugs.
Monkey on My Back was also the title of a 1957 movie based on the life of boxer Barney Ross who won the Welterweight Championship in 1930, and later joined the Marines but got addicted to morphine.
He vowed to beat the addiction and succeeded in getting the monkey off his back. If you are an old movie buff, you can watch this movie here.
The modern version of this idiom means to carry an emotional burden, be in some dire difficulty, or have a persisting problem that you are unable to shake off. It could also mean an unfulfilled obligation that causes irritation, an unfinished business or a nagging responsibility.
To understand the import of the idiom, you have to imagine a real-life monkey sitting on your back, holding tightly around your neck as its body clings onto you like a blanket. Your discomfort is compounded by the fear of what it might do to you if you try to shake it off. If someone came to your help and chased the monkey away you are happy to have it off your back.
In our daily lives, we come across people with a monkey on their backs. Think of a loan shark or a recovery agent. He would pester people and haunt them until they manage to pay him off. I have seen people who struggled to pay off mortgage debts and came close to losing the property until someone came to their rescue, of course with certain other conditions. Ironically they got rid of the big monkey on their back only for its place to be taken by a less demanding monkey!
I knew of a friend whose business ran to the ground. He was being hounded by banks and creditors and he would say that he has a gorilla, not just a monkey, on his back. Once he had even contemplated ending his life, but relatives of his wife came to his rescue and he managed to stay afloat. The burden of debt has been a monkey on many people's backs. We might even know of instances when the monkey has driven them over the edge.
I have known people who have gotten addicted to different kinds of gambling, both offline and online, or became alcoholics and squandered their savings, putting them into a debt trap. These folks seem to have voluntarily hoisted the monkey on their back.
I have known people taking the monkey off someone else’s back, helping him overcome financial problems by standing surety for a loan and getting hounded. In the process, they ended up inviting a monkey onto their backs.
The ugly face of society can be seen when a son considers his parents a burden who, for want of economic independence, suffer the indignities heaped on them. The son thinks of them as monkeys on his back and they consider their helplessness as the monkey on their back. In fact, anyone who is financially dependent on others, whether it be the mother or wife or anyone else, would consider it an insufferable plight that cannot be cured but endured with humiliation at the cost of their own self-respect.
Legend has it that the righteous king Harishchandra was undergoing seven and a half years of Shani affliction (Sadhe satti) on his horoscope and as a result, lost his kingdom, was separated from his wife and lost his son. From ancient times there is this superstition that there will be a seven-year curse of Shani which causes misery of all kinds. There are believers and non-believers. For believers, it is a monkey on the back, while the non-believers consider it a persecution complex rooted in superstition.
In the corporate world too, you may end up having monkeys on your back if you aren’t careful. There is a book entitled, “The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey” written by Kenneth H. Blanchard and published in November 2000. It conveys one simple idea: Don't take on a problem if it isn't yours! Each problem is a monkey. The more you supervise your subordinates and the more you offer to help them with their problems or solve them yourself, you will have more monkeys on your back. Your reportees will find your shoulders a nice place to perch their monkeys.
I recommend that you read this article published by Harvard Business Review: Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey?
Many managers feel overwhelmed. They have too many problems — too many monkeys — on their backs. All too often, the managers find themselves running out of time while their subordinates are running out of work. They tell the engaging story of an overburdened manager who has unwittingly taken on all of his subordinates' problems. If, for example, an employee has a problem and the manager says, "Let me think about that and get back to you," the monkey has just leapt from the subordinate's back to the manager's.
The way you measure success in monkey management is not by what one is able to do, but by what you are able to get other people to do.
I know of a friend who was harassed and victimised by his boss, and when that boss retired, my friend said, “Oh, at last, the monkey is off my back!”
Right now, I have a monkey on my back. Some unscrupulous guy is claiming ownership of a site that I sold long ago and the case has been going on for years. I could say I have a scheming monkey on my back.
Dear Readers, if you have had a monkey on your back, or have known someone in the same boat, please do share or narrate that experience.
While on the subject of monkeys, do you think Covid has been a monkey on our backs?
Parting shot: If you pay peanuts you get monkeys… maybe soon you find them on your back!
Cheers! See you next week.
Very intriguing topic....to me the latest monkey on the back is gadgets. Getting kids to stay off phones and tablets is becoming increasingly challenging and I would not hesitate to term them as addicted to screens. The pandemic has only aggravated the situation with schools going online and kids compelled to keep staring at screens for upwards of 6 hours a day. Books and writing notes have become ancillary while search engines and typing have become primary.
I asked my son to collect some information about the brain and present it in writing and pop comes a question saying can I just type it out its easier.
Whatsapp is another huge monkey that all of us are carrying on our backs. Sunrise to sunset we are all clued on to this so much so that many of us are looking to go to places where there is no network leading to phone detox.
Let's hope the strangle hold of this monkey is at least loosened if not completely taken off our backs.
I'm a little late in responding to your earlier post (#FC75), but this FC is apt for what I wanted to say. Pachu mama.. don't stop writing! You have done it for 76 weeks without a break! Amazing! Maybe you could write when you have something interesting to share... and not necessarily every week. It's hard to get a topic to write about every week - and that very pressure to get one becomes a 'monkey on your back'.. So take it easy, and get the monkey off your back and write when you can!