The other day, I saw a monkey eating chowmein on Shimla's Scandal Point. After he'd polished off the plate with practised ease, his benefactor handed him a pastry and a plastic bottle of water. The monkey leapt up on to a branch to enjoy his dessert, as many walkers on the Mall smiled and laughed at the sight. I glared at the man. "Why did you feed the monkey?" I asked. "Not only is this food bad for him, he will expect all humans to be as generous as you, and bite the next person who doesn't feed him!" The walkers muttered dissent while the benefactor was appalled: "How can you call him a nuisance? Monkeys are the animals most dear to Hanuman. If we are good to them, we will directly get his blessings..." The other people around me assured me that the rapacious armies of monkeys in the hill capital, who enjoyed snatching bags and sunglasses, destroying gardens and ripping apart clotheslines, were no bother at all. "If we don't trouble them," they said, "they don't trouble us!"
But they do. In September this year, a monkey bit over 15 people in three days before it escaped, a fugitive from justice. Farmers and orchard owners in Himachal Pradesh see so many monkey-related losses that they're demanding for them to be scientifically culled or at least sterilised. But the government refuses to take any measures, clearly apprehensive about hurting the voting populace's religious sentiments. So, probably for the want of a better alternative, some locals have reached an uneasy truce with the monkeys.
"We've often seen a huge monkey boarding one particular bus at the bus stand. The bus passes a booze shop which the simian likes to patronise. There, he picks up a bottle of the local brew while the human passengers wait patiently," my driver Sanju told me. Evidently, the monkey would then get back on the bus with his precious cargo, return to his seat and get off at the bus stand, after which he'd presumably go off to enjoy a quiet drink. Did the bus driver and booze shop owner not mind, I asked? According to Sanju, they both believed that the days the monkey made his appearance, they did good business. So, he was treated with utmost respect and courtesy. "Anyway, even if they did have any objections, who on earth will have the guts to throw a large alcoholic monkey out of the bus?" said Sanju with merriment. Could it be that the myth about monkeys bringing good luck had to do more with the locals bearing the nuisance with a grin? He shrugged: "Maybe, maybe not..."
I learnt that the government is proposing to create a new park outside Shimla where monkeys can be relocated away from human habitation. But trapping them in a non-violent manner so as to appease all religious sentiments isn't going to be easy. As I looked at the road to the Hanuman Temple at Jakhu, it was so overrun by monkeys that the odd devotee brave enough to walk amid them, did so with the furtive air of an interloper. "Devotees feed the monkeys daily. Everyone here says that killing or harming them would bring us ill luck," said Sanju. Maybe the temple priests should tell devotees that they were harming monkeys by feeding them inappropriate food, I pointed out. Sanju was quiet for a bit. Then he said: "Everyday, the temple bells in Jakhu ring out joyously at dawn. Guess who sometimes rings them...?" Monkeys, of course, I said gloomily. Surviving as it does on a vote-hungry government; salvation-seeking orthodoxy and just plain scared ordinary people, I guess the monkey mafia is here to stay...
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