My place of
residence in Adyar, Chennai, has lot of monkeys! Since my native is Adyar, we transferred
to the neighborhood area (buying a ground floor flat, 8 years back) to prevent
difficulty of climbing up and down to the first floor home there. Now shifted
back to Adyar for the last 5 months, mainly because of the emotional attachment
my father hold towards this area and having been grown myself for more than 20
years here, he is more than three decades ahead of me. Though we couldn’t go
back to our native home - which remained to be first and second floors since my
uncle runs a workshop at ground floor -
we had rented a house close to ours, therefore my dad don’t need to
wander between the neighborhoods.
 |
| a monkey on the fence (click any pics for enlarge) |
I have seen
monkeys (bonnet macaque) in my area even before shifted to neighborhood, though
I had no idea about them until transferred back to Adyar. I not even thought
that I would be back here like a bounced ball, but taking years to respond. For
me where I reside becomes second, because I have come to believe that I don’t
belong to one place. My intention was comfort and peace, and I am always open
to experience new environment and ready to adapt anyplace with basic
infrastructures. I dream of living in suburbs, where pollution and noise were
at least. That too driven towards the southern districts rather closes to
Chennai.
The monkeys here
aren’t much troublesome, though they make their presence noticeable. At the
rear of our house, canopy of trees (mostly large) sprawls for few hundred
meters provides wonderful shelter to the monkeys from very young to aged. Also
being very close to Adyar Theosophical Society and Besant Garden, which are
very few patches of green across Chennai, adjacently, gives way to forest environment
including number of rare flora and fauna. I’m really not sure these monkeys
reside among the canopy of trees at the backyard, because they don’t make their
way everyday across us. But few houses away from us used to make mild
explosions sometime, which we come to know through our servant maid that they
blast crackers to drive away the annoying monkeys.
 |
| a monkey perched on our staircase handrail |
Mostly they come
as a group or family, sitting here and there, climbing up and down and leaping
through the branches of trees. But they don’t stay long into our sight, as they
keep moving like nomads. There are even huge monkeys (perhaps obese) among
them, which could scare anybody with their looks. Before I go ahead continue
with monkey stories, I need to say my house has inbuilt something pre-cautiously
to prevent monkeys entering or looting things leaving its hands through the
windows grills. Or perhaps through their early experience with monkeys
annoyance, the owners of the house has made additional frames of net to the
existing windows, so that we could open the windows without fear of monkeys.
But the windows
in the hall doesn’t have this facility, so monkeys have attempted few times
entering our house and also succeeded, which we haven’t know until one night
dad wake up to see a monkey sitting on my bro’s helmet left on the sofa. Once
saw him it leaped through the windows but certainly scared my dad who didn’t
expect a monkey sitting on our sofa, that too at mid-night. We were blaming the
cats other day for coming into house and drink the milk left at the dining
table. But through this attempt we confirmed it was the monkey, and not the
cat. Few days back I read news in paper, that a monkey has been constantly
attacking an apartment in the neighborhood and its main intention was drinking
milk from the milk packets that dropped at every doorstep in early morning.
Before the households collect the milk packets, the monkey empty those and also
become so obese because of drinking only milk! Lol
 |
| Humpty dumpty sat on a wall |
A monkey here
also tried to scare me once, when I was alone. I working on my laptop other day
and suspect something leaps off the window before I saw it clearly. But our
pet, which was sleeping near my wheelchair, alerted me by suddenly barking at
the window. Initially I too thought it must be a cat, but following the
incident above it sounds certainly to be a monkey. Our pet haven’t seen monkeys
often, so she kept barking every time they come around and also become crazy to
chase them. My mom was plucking flowers one evening (from daily jasmine vine),
which has become her daily activity after shifted here, a monkey came waking on
the compound wall threatened her thinking she’s having something eatable in her
bowl, which she use for collecting flowers. Though it doesn't do anything, she
left the bowl on the wall and moved away and it passed as well.
So far the monkeys
hadn't been a trouble for us; but it is fun something watching their activities
and also provides opportunity to conduct photo shoot on them. The huge ones make
wonder through their appearance and they aren't active and fun making like the
young and middle once. I leave the post with a small collage on the monkeys fun below, shot at various moments! Thank you
