Growing Monkey Menace!

There has been news of monkeys attacking farmers in the Baragaon village in Himachal Pradesh, a few days back. The farmers in this region are forced to run for their life, when a gang of monkey is chasing them out of their fields. They are destroying crops and the fields are left barren.

These animals have found an easy option for gathering food – heading towards adjacent farm lands. Farmers are repeatedly angry with the mischievous behaviour of monkeys and their lives have become miserable monkey nuisance.

We often see monkeys in and around temples where they live and feed on offerings made to temple deities. From Kamakhya Temple in Assam to temple at Hampi, everywhere you will find these animals creating rubble.

In seconds, the monkeys get hold of bananas or bread or flowers (I don’t know what they do with the flowers!). They pounce on the food basket and in minutes they are gone – sitting high on the wall of a house or branch of a tree enjoying a feast of the stolen food.

I had a good experience in witnessing their mischief once. My parents and I went to the Dakshineswar Temple, (dedicated to Goddess Kali near Kolkata) a few years back. There is an area known as “Panchavati” - an enclosed space where Lord Ramakrishna used to meditate. It was a forest at that time. Now, it is turned into a sacred spot, with fencing all around and security guards for maintenance purpose.

In “Panchavati”, there is a big banyan tree, where quite a few numbers of monkeys live. People who come here buy nuts to feed them. Now my dad has oranges in the bag which he was carrying for us to have it later. However, one of those creatures was intelligent enough to guess what was inside the bag. It started pulling it strongly to get hold of those juicy fresh oranges.

At first my dad thought it was me trying to get the bag from him. But when people started shouting and telling him to leave the bag, he saw an adult monkey doing the tricks. No doubt, my dad got very much surprised at this incident and later all of us had a good laugh citing the story to our friends and relatives.

The monkey was indeed happy to get the oranges, and we were all the more happy to come back safe without getting scratched or wounded by that big sized animal.

In India, everything is possible. The monkeys have a temple dedicated entirely to them, where they are worshipped as gods - Monkey Temple or the “temple of the Sun God” in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Oh, I dream of visiting this place someday.