AT a rustic shrine 16 miles away. I was told, there were many ancient carvings, some perhaps of the Pallava period. And when I went there, I saw at a glance that there were only a few carvings, comparatively recent and unremarkable in every way. All the same I stayed at the shrine till evening and revisited it a few days later, for the bonnet monkeys there interested me.
The bonnet monkey, and its northern cousin, the rhesus are both macaques, a group of monkeys differing from the langurs (the only other monkeys proper of India) in many ways. Among macaques, the discrepancy in size between adult males and females is usually much more pronounced than in langurs, but while this is generally recognised, the remarkable local variations in size that obtain among macaques of the same species are seldom appreciated.
At this shrine there were about a hundred bonnet monkeys in several troops, all big-made and muscular. The dog-monkeys were as large and powerful as any I had seen before and I was particularly interested in a very big male in its prime that seemed to be the undisputed king of the monkeys here.
I was offering it small biscuits locally bought and waiting for it to get into a position that would show up its great muscular development in a photograph, when I heard some of the habitués of the shrine, at a distance from me, warning me urgently.
I went up to them to find out exactly what they were telling me and learnt that this monkey was a goonda, a confirmed rogue given to attacking people when provoked and sometimes without provocation; they said I had been very unwise to go so near it — why, the biscuits in my hand were sufficient inducement for an assault!
Its method of attack, I was told, was to seize its victim in one hand and then deliver a great blow with the other, a blow heavy enough to stagger a grown man or fell a woman. I asked if any of them had been so assaulted and one man told me that though he had not been a victim, he had been an eye-witness to an attack on a woman who was eating boiled corn on the cob and that the swelling on her face took a week to subside.
I did not think they were being imaginative but still found all this incredible. When attacking in earnest, big bonnet monkeys grab their victims in both hands, bite quickly, and then push hard with their arms to inflict ghastly tear-wounds with their great canines. This blow technique was new to me.
Of course I knew that they cuff one another in anger, or even a dog or a man but this is usually a quick cuff in passing as they run past, and not a deliberate blow. I myself have been so cuffed and while it is very annoying and hurts momentarily, and may even frighten some people, it cannot stagger a man or cause him grievous injury.
By the time I had learnt all this, that monkey was nowhere to be seen. I waited till evening and searched around but failed to locate it. So I returned to the shrine two days later, accompanied by a local youth and sought out the goonda. All monkeys are quick to distinguish between grown men, with whom they will not normally take liberties, and women and children whom they will attack and rob.
Apparently, two men, even though my companion was slim and slight-built, were more than this aggressive dog-monkey was willing to face. I sent my companion away and held the biscuits out towards my subject and making silly-sounding conciliatory noises, approached it guardedly.
Biscuits thrown temptingly to the monkey only resulted in its taking them behind a boulder to eat them in privacy; so I threw it a handful of puffed rice which it had to pick laboriously from the ground, and summoning my assistant, instructed him to make a noise when I had the camera ready, so that the monkey would look up — all we could see of its head as it ate the puffed rice industriously, was the crown of radiating hair.
Before I was aware of what he was doing my foolish assistant threw a stone at the monkey and in a flash it came for him with an angry “oorrr”. I told you that the young man was slim and active before the outraged monkey could reach him he had dodged behind me, and holding me in both hands, pushed me forward as a comprehensive shield! The monkey pulled up right at my feet raised and lowered its brows in an intimidatory gesture and then turned round and bolted, all in one movement — either my bulk halted it or it knew that I was not the man who had stoned it, a perfectly sound explanation considering that animals much less intelligent than macaques can distinguish between man and man.
Ater this, the goonda proved its intelligence further by refusing to be tempted by the inducements I offered it, however tempting they were. In some way it seemed to sense that I was trying to get close-up pictures of it, and it did not like the idea. Perhaps in its dim, misanthropoid mind it had developed the suspicion that I might be a goonda!
This was published on 30 October 1967