Geetanjali Krishna: Monkey business in Shimla

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

In Shimla, when the pines rustle and whisper overhead, only a few unwary tourists attribute it to the wind. Most locals gather their bags closer to themselves and walk faster "" for they know it's probably monkeys.

Simians have held this stately hill town virtually to ransom, terrorising tourists, ruining crops and causing accidents on the Shimla-Kalka highway.

Yet the Himachal Pradesh government hasn't been able to curb their menace, and the monkey population is estimated at over 1,600 in Shimla alone.

But when I was in Shimla last week, it seemed to me that the estimates had erred on the lower side. For they were everywhere "" mothers with babies clasped to their bosoms, bandit-like fathers foraging for food, little ones fooling around and behaving like the monkeys that they were.

When anyone passed by with food in hand, they'd advance towards him making menacing sounds, going closer and closer till he dropped his food in fear.

Then they'd gleefully carry the food off, and wait for the next unsuspecting person to walk by.

I was told not to leave the windows of my room open, for monkeys were known to make off with clothes drying on the windowsill, and whatever else took their fancy, if they found a way in.

Locals told horror stories of entire maize crops, so hard to grow on the hills, ruined by packs of foraging monkeys. Worse, the traffic police blamed monkeys for at least three accidents last year when they jumped on the road suddenly and caused motorists to lose control of their cars on the narrow mountain roads.

Looking at them chattering and chirping excitedly amongst themselves after they'd stolen a bag of peaches from some young boys, I realised that the once invisible simians so protected by faith and superstition, are today, Shimla's number one pests.

Only once in a while, one heard of incidents when locals were able to use these pesky primates to their profit. Like the time when an enterprising fruit-seller hit upon a novel way to double, even triple his earnings.

He trained a group of monkeys to snatch bags of fruit from his customers and bring them back to him. So he was able to sell the same fruit again and again.

By the time he was caught, he reckoned his simian employees managed to bring back one in every three packets of fruit he'd sold. In return, he fed them fruit too rotten to be sold.

But usually, monkeys and humans coexist in a much more uneasy alliance. Locals tell tales of clothes lost from clotheslines, fruit trees ravaged and fields ransacked by monkeys.

And the monkeys, if they could, would probably talk about getting injured, often killed by traffic and having their homes destroyed by the men they torment now.

Shimla's urban sprawl that has grown unchecked since early 1980s, is largely responsible for its monkey problems today. Ugly houses and uglier hotels have now replaced the pine and rhododendron forests around the hill capital that once provided food and shelter to the simians.

So the monkey population has had little option but migrate to urban areas "" just like the villagers around Shimla. Its roads, markets and temples, crowded with tourists and pilgrims, provide ample opportunities for food.

And hunger has taught them to steal, and scare people into dropping their food packets.

The state government has proposed a Rs 148 lakh project to increase the natural food base in forests and reduce birth rates by sterilising male monkeys. But until it takes off successfully, people in Shimla will just have to live with all this monkey business.