The Delhi Monkey Menace

The last thing Delhi needed was more fodder for the remark: “there are a bunch of monkeys running this place.” But the fact is that monkeys do indeed run this place, especially, as the NYT points out, when it comes to the highly touristed monuments, which boast the greenest trees to climb in and the coziest walls of ruins to perch on. Even at the President’s Palace, guards are apparently placed as much to ward off the monkeys as to defend against human intruders. And these monkeys, “cute” as they may seem to the foreigners, are nasty buggers. They pillage, bite, scream, snarl, and generally terrorize people.

Though the overpopulation of small yet aggressive monkeys has been a local irritation for years, city officials were seemingly incapable of taking effective action against the threat. Politicians hired and trained bigger monkeys to go after the little ones, courts published orders demanding action and deadlines, and the city issued bounties on captured monkeys, but alas, monkeys continued to reproduce, and their progeny proceeded with biting people, stealing alcohol, invading hospitals, and generally wreaking havoc. Meanwhile, the city couldn’t convince the nearby states to take in any of the few wild animals, or refugees, if you will, that Delhi officials had managed to trap, and release them into their bountiful forests. And so it went. Until, that is, the city’s deputy mayor fell to his death from his balcony while being threatened by four such Simian intruders last month. The city quickly hired 35 municipal monkey catchers, and divided them into teams to haul the monkeys into monkey prison.

The Delhi monkey menace has emerged largely as a result of two fascinatingly disparate aspects of India’s current personality: it’s booming economy (which has led to deforestation for residential and commercial developments as the Delhi human population mushrooms), and its deep-seated religious beliefs, which to some devout Hindus means that monkeys are to be revered, and thus, fed.

What a place this is… I can already see the “Do Not Feed the Monkeys — They BITE!” signs during the Commonwealth Games… and can only imagine the BBC commentary “Well, it’s quite a zoo out here…Oh, OH goodness! A little monkey just stole that lady’s hat!”

(A special thanks goes out to PS and VK for encouraging me to write this!)