MONKEY MENACE

Witnessed a regular turf war today between a pack of dogs and an angry bunch of langurs. It was a full-blown battle. The monkeys, with their superior teamwork, had the advantage over the dogs and would have defeated them hollow had it not been for some serious help from the staff at the nearby office. It felt similar to watching Discovery channel live but without the explanatory commentary and background score.

Langurs

Rhesus Macques

All this reminded me of the monkey menace that we had to endure while in hostel and the shameful manner in which we handled it. The monkeys there were not of any particularly interesting species - plain, old Rhesus Macaques. Definitely not at all ideal for the gross Amul Macho ads. But they made up for their lack of glamour quotient with their sheer numbers. When they came down from the hills and ran in hordes on the corrugated-tin roof of the hostel, the awful din sounded like rolling thunder. And since mischief was high on their agenda, things were not generally amicable between the monkeys and their more modern descendants at the hostel. Every time the monkeys visited the hostel they left behind a trail of destruction. Drawers were flung open in search of food, containers were pried open and their contents spread across the floor, heaps of books and papers arranged perilously on tables were knocked down, the pantry in the hostel mess was ravaged beyond recognition. The monkeys also occasionally made off with clothes, clocks, cigarettes and anything else that caught their fancy. Gifts and chocolates, both for and from special ones, too were regularly stolen by the rampaging devils. Such was their menace that they made the cryptid monkey-man in Delhi look like a veritable Simian saint.We on our part did not lose any opportunity to get back at them. In the weeks before and after Diwali, any monkey which was sighted would be attacked with a volley of firecrackers. Though very few of the missiles actually hit their mark or did any serious damage, but they frightened the Macaques enough to bring peace to the hostel for a couple of months. But peace is a rare luxury and it would not be long before the monkeys would be back with a vengeance. It was almost like Gabbar with a band of monkeys raiding the village of Ramgarh with sadistic delight. But just as "...Ramgarhwaalon ne paagal kutton ke saamne roti daalna band kar diya...", so we too decided that enough was enough. There had to be a way out. Accordingly, one fine Sunday, the raiding monkeys were pleasantly surprised to find a sumptuous feast laid down for them in the dining area. What they failed to notice was that except for one small window, all the other doors and windows in the dining area were closed. Boldly but carefully a bunch of monkeys entered the mess and tore into the food oblivious to the fact that the only open window had been closed. The original intention was to scare the life away from the monkeys with lots of loud firecrackers, but mob behaviour is a strange phenomenon which makes people act in ways in which they normally would not have. What happened next was utter carnage as twenty of the hostel braves (honestly, I was not among them) swooped down on the monkeys. Screams and shrieks flooded the air as blow after blow rained down on the hapless bunch. The monkey-god, Hanuman cringed from his abode in heaven and must have cursed entire humanity. To a band of enraged young men, however, it did not matter if they were reborn as vermins and parasites in their next lives. What mattered was revenge - cold blooded revenge. It was fast turning into a blood-bath, when someone mercifully opened a couple of windows. The monkeys which had managed to evade the blows made a desperate dash for escape while the wounded ones slowly and painfully limped away. When the dust finally settled, someone noticed that one of the raiders was lying slumped on the floor of the mess, quite obviously dead. Amidst much hooting and cheering, the dead monkey was suspended from a tree for all his kind to see and fear. Throughout the day it remained there dangling from tree - a grim reminder of his descendants' cruelty. The other monkeys must removed him from tree that night as it was not there in the morning. I do not remember the monkeys coming to the hostel after that day. And though we never had to clean up our rooms again in the aftermath of their raids, we did miss their thunder on the corrugated tin roof.
The guilt hurts most of us even today.