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K P Poornachandra Tejaswi (1938–2007) was a remarkable figure in Kannada Footnote 1 literature. Poet, novelist, travel writer, naturalist, and essayist, Tejaswi is credited with ushering in a new realm of “protest literature” with his short-story collection Abachoorina Post Offisu . Recipient of many national and state awards for his literary contributions, Tejaswi was also deeply interested in science and his science writings charmingly balance science and art. Nature and biological phenomena remained a deep source of inspiration for him throughout his life—much of his work explores the multiple facets of human engagement with the environment and wildlife. In 1962, Tejaswi moved to Mudigere, in the Western Ghats mountain range of southern India, to take up farming and remained there for the rest of his life. His collection of short stories Parisarada Kathe (Stories of the Environment), written during the following decade, is based on his early experiences of living and farming on his coffee and cardamom estate in Mudigere. “ Gaadli ” from Parisarada Kathe is a delightful comment on the complex relationship between people and macaques in this part of the country. Through the trials and tribulations of Gaadli, the eponymous protagonist of the story, the author paints a deeply perceptive picture of the bond that connects people to monkeys. In a succinct piece of writing, Gaadli transcribes the entire gamut of issues surrounding the human-macaque conflict situation; Tejaswi’s perspective on monkey worship, crop raiding, culling, food provisioning, and translocation will surely strike a chord in primatologists and conservation biologists alike.

The residents of Nidagodu, Hoishalalu, and other villages had called for a meeting; I too attended it as I thought it was to discuss the menace caused by monkeys. Indeed, the agenda was this.Footnote 2 But the minute the meeting commenced, all the gathered members began to berate and threatened to beat Gaadli, who worked as a writer Footnote 3 on Sasi Estate. They were angry because Gaadli had chased the monkeys from his estate, which had then moved into their villages and were creating problems on their estates. If I was in Gaadli’s position, I would have said, “if the presence of monkeys on my plantation is a nuisance, I will chase them out of my estate in any direction, and who are you to ask?” But the soft-natured Gaadli, without protesting, contritely said that somebody had brought the monkeys and left them there, and that the Panchayat Footnote 4 should arrange to catch and release them somewhere else.

Organising for a monkey catcher and capturing the monkeys and releasing them elsewhere is a rather regular business here. If the Panchayat sanctioned the money, they would contract monkey catchers from Belur to trap the monkeys and release them elsewhere. Then, the monkeys would start to harass the people there. This had happened once earlier, even before I bought my estate.

People feared killing monkeys as they believed that monkeys are an incarnation of the god Hanuman. If due to any reason a monkey died, people would follow the ritual of treating it with milk and ghee, cremate it, and all the villagers would be in mourning. As monkeys have hands, legs, and faces like humans, people are probably afraid of killing them! But, as monkeys are eaten in the districts of Dakshina Kannada and Kodagu, these monkey-related problems must not exist there. The belief in the divinity of monkeys is so widespread however that even people who belong to the Billava and Harijana castes and whose traditions permit them to eat monkey flesh have been proclaiming that monkeys should not be eaten. There are two Billava families in my village, and when I questioned them about the practice of monkey eating, they behaved as if I had insulted their status and protested loudly. Some others picked up this story and made a song and dance about Billava ancestors who had consumed monkey meat for its medicinal value and castigated the people who had mentioned this to me.

The monkeys here have taken advantage of the religious beliefs of the villagers and damage their property with impunity. I don’t think any of the other wild animals cause half as much damage as these monkeys do. As they have highly developed hands and good brains to think with, it is very difficult to control them. When they raid estates, one vigilant animal usually sits atop a tree to watch for people while the rest of them feed on the crop. If anybody approaches, the animal on guard signals the rest by calling kirro kirro. Immediately, all the other monkeys escape into the nearby forest. Climbing the tall trees in the forest, they sit behind the foliage and even Brahma Footnote 5 cannot locate them!

When the Panchayat members had chided Gaadli, I had been surprised, as I was not aware of the intensity of the problem created by the monkeys. But within a few days of the meeting, my estate watcher, Maara, came to me saying that he wanted to resign, as it was not possible to control the havoc caused by the monkeys. I went to check on the cardamom plot—it was a disaster! How monkeys can destroy cardamom plants can only be known to people who have seen it. Every cardamom plant had been uprooted, ripped apart, and hung on various trees. I was distressed and furious at the same time.

This group had absolutely no fear of humans. Maara used to beat the drums, burst firecrackers, and do a lot of other things. They were just not bothered by any of these. At the end of it, when Maara went to chase them away, they flashed their big teeth and scared him with their gurrr-gurrr. Earlier, Maara had claimed that Hanuman should not be killed, but now that they had frightened him, he alarmed me by declaring that, “If these are not killed with gun, they are a threat to my life and I will resign.”

I was not such an ahimsavadi Footnote 6 to have the monkeys transported to a distant place by paying 10–20 rupees per monkey. And so by the time Maara had decided that the monkeys should be killed, I had also reached a similar state of mind.

My anger against these monkeys had now reached its zenith and the incident in which they attacked Kivi was also a reason. Assuming that on seeing a dog the monkeys would not climb down to the ground, Maara instigated Kivi against them. On seeing the dog, the monkeys vanished into the forests yelling out taarooo. Gaining confidence, Kivi chased them into the forest. Having distanced themselves from humans and seeing that the dog was alone, seven to eight large monkeys jumped on the dog and bit him, tearing his flesh out in two or three spots. If Maara had not gone on time and chased them away with a stick, they would have killed Kivi. After this incident, Maara was afraid to tackle the monkeys on his own. I not only had to go to the hospital and get Kivi’s wounds stitched but had to make the rounds of the hospital for 14 days to get Kivi his antirabies injections.

I had lost my patience. I was not in a position to consider wildlife conservation, Forest Department laws, and nonviolence. Never mind the monkeys; I was so angry that even if people had caused the same damage, I would have killed them.

Now I understood why people had tried to beat up Gaadli in the Panchayat meeting.

I loaded my gun and on seeing Kivi with me, one of the monkeys started down the tree, flashing his canines and threatening gurr-gurr. The face of the monkey was like the red face of a European, with flashes of anger in its eyes. Maara cried out “Put a bullet to that one, it is the leader of the group!” I fired and the monkey fell instantly to the ground and died.

I had gone with a decision to kill all the monkeys. But when the leader of the group fell from the tree and died, the impact of this on the entire group was terrible. All the monkeys fled helter-skelter, calling out kurro marro, and jumping from branch to branch. Maara, in a victorious mood, called out, “Shoot a few more.” But there was no chance of that as the monkeys had crossed the paddy field, the plantation, and had fled in the direction of Gaadli’s Sasi Estate.

I expected some objections from the villagers for killing the monkey. It seems some people did object. Most of the villagers however expressed their support for killing the monkey and for chasing the rest of the group towards Gaadli’s plantation. Hunter Manjappa even threatened Gaadli, “Next time you chase the monkeys in this direction, we will not kill the monkeys and be sinners, we will kill you.”

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The owner of the estate, where Gaadli worked, was Sherav. He spent very little time on the estate as his children worked in Mumbai. The estate appeared derelict and shabby due to lack of maintenance. As the trees had not been pruned regularly, they had grown tall and the canopy was so thick that sunlight did not penetrate to the ground, making it difficult to even chase the monkeys away. Sherav did not spend any money on estate maintenance; instead, he appeared to think that if Gaadli was reprimanded, the estate would flourish. He used to admonish Gaadli saying, “You have ruined the estate by attending to it only once a month.” Such rebukes increased severalfold after the monkeys had settled in the estate.

Gaadli tried whatever he could to stop the monkeys. He set a roller in the stream, where it rotated based on the flow of water, and tied it to a metal stick. The stick was placed next to a metal drum, so that the stick continuously beat the drum, creating a load noise. However, the continuous sound coming from this drum had become a lullaby to these monkeys, and they started ignoring it.

He also experimented with a strange method to chase the monkeys—he stored country liquor in a few pots and laid out a few sticks next to the pots. I don’t know who suggested this idea to him. His reasoning was that once the monkeys get high after drinking the liquor, they would fight one another with the sticks. When I joked about this method to a few people in the village, they responded quite seriously that it was a regular practice in the region. Taken aback, I enquired with Gaadli about the success of the technique. On one occasion, he said, some people drank up half the liquor and added water to the pots, and the monkeys did not touch the contaminated liquor. Another time the liquor pots were apparently broken but the sticks had not been disturbed; the monkeys had probably fought without using the sticks and had broken the pots.

Sometime later, Gaadli came to see me. The liquor pot experiment had failed. The monkeys, instead of fighting amongst themselves, had started breaking the liquor pots. His estate owner had warned him that he would fire him if he failed to stop the monkey menace. Gaadli sadly asked me to help him by shooting the monkeys.

I asked him, “Why I should come and kill the monkeys? Don’t you know how to shoot?”

“I know to use the gun. But I don’t shoot monkeys, Sir.”

“Why won’t you shoot them?”

“Is not the monkey a god? So far I haven’t killed any monkeys, Sir. How can I kill them now?”

“So what if you haven’t killed the monkeys so far, you kill them now.”

“That is my belief, Sir. Why should I go to hell by killing these monkeys? Tomorrow, if something happens to me…”

So I said, “Okay Gaadli, if you believe that monkeys are gods, you should convince me to not kill them. How can you ask me to hunt them? What if something happens to me after killing the monkeys?”

Gaadli understood and approved my logic. “That is also true, Sir. Why should I make you kill the monkeys and accrue the sin for that?”

I did not want to chase or kill the monkeys in his estate because if monkeys were chased away from there, they would flee to my estate. And as I had seen one Panchayat meeting, I was not ready to arrange another one.

Gaadli went to Belur to enquire about the monkey catchers. But as they asked 25 rupees for each monkey, he was unable to pay them and hire their services. Ultimately, Gaadli begged and convinced them to provide a cage on a rental basis and brought the cage back with him by bus.

So far, Gaadli’s monkey-chasing methods had provided much amusement, but few results. Hence, I didn’t ask him about the result of this exercise although I had seen him taking the monkey-catching cage on his bullock cart from the bus stand to his estate.

The monkey-catching cage was a modified version of the cages that are used to transport tigers or lions by circus companies. The cage had two chambers. Both the chambers had doors that could be lifted from the top. The outer door could be lifted up and latched. A wire connected the latch to a rod inside the chamber. If monkeys shook or disturbed the rod inside the chamber, this would trigger the latch and the door would fall and lock the cage. It was not possible to open the door from the inside, even if the monkeys pulled the latch by putting their hands out. It was only possible to lift the door from outside. Once the monkeys were trapped in the first chamber, the door of the second chamber would be lifted and the monkeys sent in here. Then, the outer door would be lifted and latched to trap the next monkey. After all the monkeys were caught in this fashion, they would be taken away in the cage. But I had my doubts about its efficacy. Monkeys are such intelligent creatures, I thought; catching them in this big cage that looks like a jail will be difficult. Even if one or two monkeys do get caught by chance, the others would be frightened and run away.

After a few days, cattle herder Rama told me that Gaadli had caught one or two monkeys in the cage. As Gaadli was not around, I could not talk to him. And as I was busy with estate work, I could not go to meet Gaadli, though I wanted see how he had caught the monkeys.

After 2 days, Rama told me that Gaadli had caught many monkeys and the cage was filled with them.

I was now excited to see the cage. I went to the estate and asked for Gaadli, but by then he had taken the cage on Poodiya’s cart to the forest where he would release the monkeys the next morning.

Later, I didn’t see Gaadli for a few days. Then, I met two villagers coming down the road who were talking about him. From their talk, it appeared that when Gaadli tried to release the monkeys in the forest, the monkeys came out of the cage and pushed Gaadli inside the cage and locked him in! They told me that Gaadli was inside the cage for 2 days without food. Then, people from a neighbouring village saw him and released him. By this time, he was half dead due to thirst and hunger. I had seen many strange and peculiar things after I came to this forest to tend my plantation. But I could not believe that monkeys had put Gaadli inside a cage and locked him in. Seeing my disbelief, the two villagers said, “If you do not believe our words, ask Gaadli”, and they left.

I thought the owners of the nearby estate must have caught Gaadli and put him inside the cage when he went to release the monkeys. Where stories about Gaadli were concerned, people commonly added a hundred things to one.

When I met Gaadli, I asked him, “Is it true that the monkeys locked you inside the cage?” He replied that it was true that he had been trapped inside the cage. But he had neither been pushed inside by monkeys nor by man. He had been trapped inside the cage due to some unexpected events. One can say that the reason for this is the worshipful regard he had for monkeys.

When each monkey was trapped and was made to go to the second chamber, Gaadli thought that they should not die because of hunger. So he provided the monkeys with jackfruit, rice, and water on all the days. When the cage became full, he had taken it on Poodiya’s cart to release the monkeys in the forests of Jennapura, about 10 miles away. When he took down the cage from the cart with Poodiya’s help and opened the door, only a few monkeys ran out. The monkeys had grandly feasted for many days in the cage and most of them had decided to remain there. Thus, they protested when they were forced out. Poodiya and Gaadli chased out a few monkeys with much effort using sticks, but when they lifted the outer door to free the remaining ones, the monkeys that had been chased out earlier, now went back inside the cage. Poodiya had no love for monkeys. When he tried to chase them out by beating them, he broke a hand of one of the monkeys. This upset Gaadli and he scolded Poodiya. He then suggested that they wait for some time. If the monkeys did not get any food, they would leave the cage to look for some.

By this time, Poodiya was annoyed with the monkeys. When he realised that while waiting for the monkeys to get hungry, they would also go hungry, he angrily said, “I can’t wait; you let me know once all the monkeys are out of the cage.” He then returned to the village.

As time passed, all the monkeys, one by one, moved out of the cage except for one that remained in the cage, when evening fell, expecting food from Gaadli. Thirsty and hungry, Gaadli had lost all patience; he went inside the cage and pulled the tail of the monkey and pushed it towards the door. The monkey, which had been sitting inside occasionally threatening him by flashing its canines, now screeched and scratched him. Gaadli remembers that this startled him into shaking the metal rod inside the cage. The monkey fled the cage but the door slid down and locked Gaadli inside. Although he tried to lift the door, he could not open it from inside the cage.

Gaadli and Poodiya had come to a remote area in the forest to release the monkeys to prevent them from returning to the estate. There were no people around who could hear Gaadli’s cries for help. The nearest village, Manale, with a few houses was about 2 miles away. Gaadli was inside the cage for 2 days without food and water. He was finally in such a state that when he saw two women who had come to collect firewood, he just lay there blinking his eyes, unable even to call for help. The women were so terrified when they saw a human being inside the cage that they threw down the firewood and ran back to the village. On hearing this from the women, some men came from the village to release Gaadli; he just lay there gasping for water.

Gaadli told me that if Poodiya had remained with him, this would not have happened, and he upbraided Poodiya in front of me for the difficult situation he had caused. As Poodiya had not imagined that Gaadli would get caught in the cage, his failure to return, even after 2 days, had not worried him. When I spoke to Poodiya, he retorted “How would I know that he would be in a situation where he would not find food or water when there are houses here, every few steps?”