A wide-view shot of a small group of young monkeys
Credit: iStock Photo
It is almost summer. I walk into our small garden and come to a halt. The mango trees are flowering, and there are a few small green mangoes hanging from the branches. A large simian is atop the garden wall and is reaching out to pluck the tiny mangoes. I beat a quiet retreat, but my other half is braver and more curious. He clicks a picture of the uninvited guest.
Have you ever hobnobbed with simians? I have, and in different parts of the country.
The first time it was in a non-metro city in the atrium of our heritage office building, which had a huge leafy tree in the middle. Three of us colleagues ate our lunch seated on the parapet of the atrium every day. That day I had a bunch of bananas with me. After lunch, on our way back to our workplaces, this little monkey suddenly waylaid us and tugged at my dupatta. I dropped the bananas in a panic and ran, calling to my colleagues to run too. My reaction alerted the little one’s clan, and we were surrounded by three adult monkeys. As luck would have it, one colleague was scratched and bitten by a particularly aggressive monkey. She went through the full course of painful anti-rabies injections. I still feel guilty about dropping the bananas.
The second time was again at work, on a Sunday. I was alone and engrossed in my work, when I felt my chair shake. Is it an earthquake, I wondered, when it stopped. A minute later, it happened again. This time I looked back and screamed. A baby monkey was trying to enter my room through the open window. Luckily, the little one was as scared of me as I was of him, and beat a hasty retreat, giving me time to close the window.
The next time, it was as I was leaving for work. I hurriedly hid on the staircase of the building, as a troop of monkeys jumped on the cars parked outside the flats. They then made their way to the staircase, but I was lucky enough to evade them as I rushed out into the street and into my car.
I am often teased about having simian friends, especially by my son, who at the age of two, was bitten on the cheek by a humongous monkey. We joke that the toddler was so cute that the visitor wanted to kiss him. Fortunately, the monkey who had picked up the child, did not carry out the intended kidnapping. The faint scar on my son’s cheek is a reminder of the close encounter he had with a simian.