Monkey business development

Mathura’s bespectacled monkeys could be sent to other countries to reform their apes

Among the most alarming news items I’ve come across recently — second only to what I heard through the grapevine about Malaika Arora’s dog, Casper, being somewhat indisposed — is the atrocity perpetrated by a furry resident of Vrindavan.

A few days ago, apparently, an unruly monkey snatched the spectacles of no less than the holy city’s District Magistrate. That, too, while he was attending to an important civic matter on his phone. The magistrate that is, not the monkey.

That’s not all, by the way. The thieving creature then proceeded to climb up a wall and, in a leisurely fashion, do things with the glasses that monkeys are prone to doing.

Meanwhile, the ineffectual local constabulary used all the methods they are known for — from speaking ingratiatingly to it to threatening to show it Liger — to retrieve the personal property of the hardworking Government servant. And the simian finally deigned to return the spectacles to the magistrate only after being bribed with two cartons of chilled mango juice.

Story was that on two earlier occasions, either the same monkey or his cousin, showing utter disregard for the gentleman’s post, had behaved in a most unbecoming manner with the same IAS officer.

Soon, social media was abuzz with people sharing their own eerily similar experiences with the monkeys of Mathura.

While some attributed the urban naxal tendencies of these monkeys to an increase in their biryani intake, which in turn was corrupting their impressionable minds and making them do things that normal, God-fearing Indian monkeys aware of their culture wouldn’t do, I didn’t jump to conclusions.