Asia > India > Rajasthan > Jaipur > Articles > Primate Suspect: The Terrorist Apes of Jaipur

I had just come out of a crowded seventeenth century temple in the middle of Jaipur - all billowing incense, gaudy idols and chanting priests - when I had the encounter with the monkey.

The beast had a red bottom and a mean, son-of-a-bitch expression on its face. It hissed, flashed its teeth and moved towards me. From between its legs a pair of outsized red testicles swung malevolently from side to side. Alarmed and unsure of what to do, I stood completely still. Again the monkey pulled back its lips. Inside its mouth lay a line of horrible, jaundice-yellow fangs.

Then, with a sudden jump, the animal leapt up and pulled a marigold garland - a gift from one of the temple priests - from around my neck. Then it scampered off up the aerial roots of a nearby banyan tree. There it sat scratching its belly while it carefully picked the marigold blooms off their connecting thread. Then, one by one, it popped the orange flowers, one after another, into its mouth just like some fat Hindu Rajah single-handedly gorging an entire box of milky-sweet ladoos.

As I stood there, looking up into the tree, a small crowd of well-wishers - turbaned villagers and plump dhoti-clad shop keepers - gathered around:

"O Sahib," said one, "really this thing is bloody outrage."

"These monkeys," said another witness, an angry old sadhu with a walking stick. "Any eatables they are stealing..."

"...any shiny object..."

"...and babies also."

"They are eve-teasing [molesting] all our village girls..."

"Some they are even raping."

"Really: this is truth only."

As the crowd grew, everyone wobbled their heads from side to side and began to tell their own monkey horror-stories. Many of these made my own recent experience seem very tame. Indeed there seemed to be a consensus among the crowd that Jaipur had virtually come under siege from its resident regiments of menacing monkeys.

The animals, people said, had always been here: after all 'Bubbles' Jaipur, the town's Maharajah, claimed to be the direct descendant of the hero Ram and for this reason the Jaipuris had a special devotion to Ram's lieutenant, the Monkey God Hanuman. Out of respect for the Divine Monkey, the town's pious shopkeepers had always made a point of leaving great quantities of bananas and peanuts outside their stores specially for the benefit of Hanuman's terrestrial cousins.

But without warning, sometime around the time of the last Monsoon, the cosseted primates had quite suddenly turned nasty. Some had been seen to calmly walk into houses, open fridge doors, then remove the assorted goodies hidden within. Others had begun organising Bonnie and Clyde-style raids on grocery stalls. While one monkey kept the store owner busy, driving the terrified man into a corner and keeping him there with bared fangs, the accomplices would raid the fruit baskets at the front of the shop and make off with whatever they wanted.

More bizarre still were the reports of a single monkey-assassin who had begun randomly attacking the town's policemen. The monkey was said to suddenly drop out of a tree and dig its fangs into the unsuspecting policemen's leg; no less than twelve constables had reported hit-and-run attacks of this sort.

The most celebrated story of all, however, was one well-attested case of a monkey hotly pursuing an elderly policeman named Sub Inspector Bhola Ram. Sub Inspector Ram happened to be on a motorbike when the monkey jumped down from its place of ambush. Initially frustrated by the acceleration of the Sub Inspector's vespa, the monkey nevertheless chased the elderly Sub Inspector through the alleys of the Old City, before eventually catching up with him at a traffic light two miles away. There the animal had bit a small lump out of one of Bhola Ram's buttocks before disappearing up into a tree. From there it threw down a rain of sticks at the crowd who had gathered below.

Eventually two busloads of police had arrived on the scene with strict instructions to cordon off the area and capture the offending monkey alive: because of the town's association with Hanuman, the Jaipur IG of Police had not dared to order the monkey's shooting, however psychopathic it was becoming. Yet despite all the assembled policemen and the extravagant security arrangements, the monkey had still managed to jump from tree-top to tree-top, from vine to vine, in time-honoured Tarzan fashion, and so given the law the slip.

As the tales of these simian outrages poured out, I decided to go and see the serious men of the Jaipur Civil Service to try and establish once and for all if there was any truth whatsoever in these wild stories.

"But it is all true," protested Mr Karni Singh Rathore, the Jaipur Municipal Administrator. "This is nothing short of an invasion. Last year we had no less than 465 reports of monkey bites in the SMS hospital. But then the donkeys are climbing quickly up some tree and no one is catching them..."

"Do you mean donkeys?"

"Donkeys, no? Monkeys? Yes, monkeys: monkeys are doing this business. This is what I am meaning."

"And the story of Sub Inspector Bhola Ram? Surely that is exaggeration?"

"No, no," said Mr. Rathore. "That also is true."

(Later, when I went to see Arun Duggar, the Deputy Inspector General of the Jaipur City Police he confirmed the truth of this unlikely story, adding: "I myself have had food stolen from my fridge by these monkeys. They leave eggs and all non-veg spicy foods and take only fruits and other vegetarian eatables." His Director of Public Relations, Mr. Laxman Boliya, added that only a week previously a monkey had broken into his office and promptly eaten his best Parker pen, a prized souvenir of a visit to England ten years previously.)

Back in the Jaipur Secretariat, Mr. Rathore opened one of his drawers and showed me a report recently published by a Jaipur-based doctor of Primate Behaviour in a Dutch Zoological journal called Applied Animal Behaviour Science. The report attempted to explain the mysterious change in the disposition of Jaipur's normally indolent monkeys, and located the cause of the problem in the huge increase in the town's human population.

According to the report, Jaipur's growing size - and the rash of building activity that this had engendered - had thrown the entire world of the monkeys out of balance. In order to survive they had been forced to resort to what the doctor described as "aggressive and often criminal" behaviour. The only solution, suggested the report, was "that the excess number of monkey groups should be translocated to a more favourable environment."

"It was because of this report that we decided measures had to be taken," said Mr. Rathore.

"What measures?"

"You would like to see?"

The next morning at half past seven Mr. Rathore and I could be seen cowering in a makeshift hide near the Jaipur stadium, the scene of one of England's recent cricketing humiliations.

On a nearby terrace a crowd of monkeys were suspiciously examining a trail of bananas leading from the bottom of their tree towards a carefully disguised bamboo cage, not dissimilar to that used by the Child Catcher in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. As the lady monkeys hungrily gobbled-up the bananas, their mate, a huge angry-looking male, sat on an upturned oil drum, his eyes darting from left to right, searching for a trap, an enemy or a rival male.

"Last Monsoon we made a contract for catching 1,000 monkeys," said Mr. Rathore. "That contract was completed by some fellows from Uttar Pradesh. The monkeys were taken to the Sariska Game Sanctuary and released, but still our townspeople were complaining. Monkeys were attacking police-wallahs and kidnapping some babies also. So we decided to take on a Municipal Monkey Catcher full time."

Mr. Rathore flushed with pride: "We are the first town in all-India to make this innovation."

On the terrace, the monkeys were now gingerly examining the bamboo cage. After some initial suspicions, one or two were now being tempted inside by the mountain of bananas and peanuts that lay scattered within. First one then all the ladies wandered uncertainly inside and began to carefully peel and eat the bananas, all the time looking sharply around for signs of a trap. For a few minutes the male kept guard from his station on top of the oil drum. Then, unable to resist any longer, he let himself down from and scampered inside to join his harem.

No sooner had he done so than there was a sharp crack. A wooden support which had held up the door of the cage was pulled away; the door slid firmly shut. The monkeys were trapped.

Then something very strange happened. The oil drum where the male monkey had been sitting began to wobble from side to side and finally toppled right over. From its bottom, first a pair of feet, then two legs and finally the trunk of a man could be seen to emerge.

This is Municipal Monkey Catcher," said Karni Singh Rathore proudly. "He is taking up his station inside that drum and watching proceedings from two holes. When the monkeys have gone inside cage to eat their tiffin, he is pulling one string and trapping these chaps good and proper."

A few minutes later when the monkeys had been carefully decanted into a set of smaller cages, the Municipal Monkey Catcher descended from his terrace by a rickety step-ladder.

He was a tall, lean, dark man with an ebullient waxed moustache; around his head he wrapped a woolly muffler. His name was Dhanna Lal and he was from the Shikari (Huntsman) caste. Ever since hunting had been made illegal in the 1960's he and his family had survived by raiding the combs of wild bees and selling their honey. But although a monkey bite was, he said, much worse than one hundred bee stings, this new job was much better paid: he got 60 rupees for every monkey he captured so in a good month he could make six thousand rupees - a year's salary for a honey collector.

I asked: "Are monkeys intelligent animals?"

"Oh very intelligent," said Dhanna Lal. "They can turn the handles of doors, open locks and turn on taps. Sometimes they are so clever I have to leave opium in their bananas before I can capture them. Only then - when they are sleeping - can I get them."

Dhanna Lal looked slightly ashamed: "It's a dirty trick to play. Hanuman [the monkey God] would be very angry with me..."

"You are a devotee of Hanuman?"

"Of course: he is my God. In order to please him I never go trapping on a Tuesday, his special day. Instead my family all go to the temple and make offerings."

"What do you do if you are attacked by monkeys?" I asked.

"I hide in the oil drum."

"But that can't give you much protection."

"No. My whole body is covered in bites."

"Show Mr. William all your bites," said Mr. Rathore who was standing nearby.

Dhanna Lal lifted up the arm of his shirt. There were great red weals dotting his forearms.

"What to do?" said Dhanna Lal, shrugging his shoulders. "This is my job."

"But shouldn't you carry some weapon for self-defence?" I asked.

"If I did, when the monkeys attack me I would be tempted to use it. Then some animal would die. It would be a very great sin. It would be as bad as killing my brother."

"So you think of the monkeys as human beings?" I asked.

"Of course," replied Dhanna Lal. "They are just like us: they have the same five fingers, two hands, ears and eyes."

He paused for a second to collect his thoughts:

"The only difference," he said philosophically, "is that they have a tail and we don't."

Articles

• More from William Dalrymple