A Punjab towns unique tryst with simians. The people of Lehragaga town in Punjab take monkey business seriously. They fear the wrath of the simians,revere them,and sometimes even brandish a stick to ward them off,but in the end,they cant live without them. This love-hate relationship rests in a belief that the monkeys protect the village from catastrophes. Legend has it,that many centuries ago,the town was struck by famine because the monkeys were angry and left. So the people congregated in the forest and pleaded with the monkeys to return. Since then,we do not kill,hit or shoo away monkeys, says Romesh Bhardwaj,a businessman,who runs a shop in the main market. In this town,40 km from Sangrur,near the Punjab-Haryana border,the monkeys seem to have their own way of claiming territory. We have two groups of simians here. One group lives outside the town near the canal while another lives inside the town. Violent clashes occur between the groups if a member of one group stumbles into the others area, says Bhardwaj. For a town that dares not hurt or kill a monkey,it was sacrilege when a prominent resident once shot a monkey,in the late 80s. The incident created an uproar. People paraded the corpse across town before formally cremating it. They collected money to build a temple in the marketplace,in memory of the deceased animal. But such devotion doesnt mean there is peaceful coexistence. The shopkeepers in the markets keep sticks to scare away monkeys who swoop down to steal bananas and vegetables. A lack of trees in the city has prompted the monkeys to nest on rooftops of shops and houses. They pull down clothes laid out to dry,enter kitchens,decamp with food from refrigerators and even attack people. Shopkeepers have even fenced their rooftops with barbed wires to keep the simians away. Its not surprising that people of the town have stories to tell. I have been living in this town for 11 years and these monkeys are a part of our lives. They run away with my food if I leave my kitchen door open. Once I was walking to school with my son,carrying a tiffin box ,when we saw a group of monkeys charging towards us. We were rescued by a car that stopped to take us in, says Neeru Mittal,a school teacher. Smile Singh,a resident of the Old Grain Market,says,Once,my cousins found a dead monkey on the road. They wanted to take it away for cremation but the moment they tried to pick it up,over 50 monkeys attacked them from all sides. Looks like throwing a monkey wrench in the works is not a good idea after all.
