It sounds odd but it is true that India’s President Pranab Mukherjee had been advised by people of Vrindavan in Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh not to wear his eyeglasses when he visits the place. He should either place the specs in his inner pocket or come wearing contact lenses.

Reason: Vrindavan, a temple-town, is among the holy places where monkeys have been reigning supreme since time immemorial. They are countless because they have been multiplying by leaps and bounds. Associated with monkey deity Hanuman, the simians cannot be harmed.

The result has been that they became too nasty and aggressive. They survive on the food and fruit and the ‘prasad’ (offerings) brought by the hundreds of devotees. But more than anything else, they have developed a fascination for cameras, caps, eyeglasses and sunglasses. The monkeys snatch eye/sunglasses and cameras with lightning speed. Mukherjee also wears specs. The problem is that the snatcher monkey wears the glasses like humans and then grimaces at its owner, sometimes in mocking mode.

Wearing dark glasses or eyeglasses, it sits straight and poses in front of the crowd as if for a photo op. And, yes, viewers carrying cameras do photograph him. Most of them are foreign tourists who do not witness such interesting scenes back home. All this done, the monkey would then invariably crush the glasses and throw the broken pieces right in front of its owner, if not on his or her face.

The menacing simians do not make any distinction between a VVIP visitor and a commoner. Imagine how would the country’s top constitutional head, the huge security paraphernalia and the large number of onlookers, view such a spectacle.

These factors gave the district administration, the Special Protection Group, other security forces and the police the jitters when they were asked to make foolproof arrangements to avert such a possibility.

Hub of simians

Mukherjee, scheduled to lay a foundation stone in Vrindavan, had expressed his desire to visit the famous Bankey Bihari Temple. Somehow, the Bankey Bihari Temple of Lord Krishna, believed to have been built by Swami Haridas in 1862, is a big hub of simians. Several hundreds of them dot the entire place. Their sheer number has been a strong deterrent to monkey catchers.

Attempts to rein them in have failed and were given up. So, monkeys and men have been coexisting there. However, as said before, the huge army of brown-haired monkeys and their antics make news for foreigners.

The establishment had requisitioned a large number of security and police personal to keep an eye at every nook and corner of the place and even CCTV cameras were installed at strategic points. I believe that the CCTV was to be part of the routine security drill. It would not have been deployed for identifying any mischief-making monkey or monkeys for, all monkeys look alike.

Still, the authorities were wary of any surprise intrusion by the simians in the sanitised area. Charged with the onerous task of ensuring foolproof security, the administration requisitioned 10 langoors to keep the monkeys at bay. It is well-known that the monkeys are mortally scared of these black-faced cousins who are said to be able to rope in and fling monkeys with their long tail.

It would be relevant to point out that langoors have been hired by government offices in Delhi close to Parliament House to save office files and other records from the hordes of monkeys that traverse the area. They have also been deployed to drive away monkeys from residential localities where they ransack refrigerators, wardrobes and the likes.

The strategy has succeeded.

And this reminds me of a similar predicament that the British Parliament house is facing at the hands (and mouth) of mice who have been nibbling at files and other precious material there.

Like langoor for monkeys in India, the House of Commons was examining the feasibility and effectiveness of arranging and allowing cats to roam about freely ... and arrange on their own, meals of mice.

Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.