Indians monkeys and European Langoors

He he. I seek your apology for this catchy title but allow me to explain myself a bit.

The Incident

This incident dates back to 2010 when i went to Neelkanth shrine which is located in deep jungles of Rishikesh. I went via  the 12 km trekking route and passed through dense jungle heavily inhabited with monkeys and langoors. A passer-by informed me that around 2 decades ago even leopards could be seen in this area but have now moved to inner recesses of the jungle.  

As i moved on, i was greeted with gang of monkeys who were trying to snatch food articles from passer-by's. As it is a great satisfaction and entertainment to see monkeys eating grams and biscuits, i bought  a big supply from the nearby seller. All the grams were intented for the monkeys but i had a hard time distributing them to monkeys. All i wanted that all monkeys should have the gram rather than everything be snatched away by one monkey. Situation was getting uncontrollable and their was a danger of me being attacked by a monkey so eventually i ended up carrying the unexposed bag of grams with me and could not distribute everything as i planned.

As i walked for around 5 to 6 kms, i saw some langoors eating food from the passer-by pilgrims. I too started distributing my enormous supply of grams and later on ended up surrounded by 2 dozen langoors. The langoors were patient for their turns and i felt like a headmaster distributing copies to school children :). It was a memory of lifetime. Contented me, i ended up distributing my entire supply of food  to them and even bought more from local sellers. 

Learning Part

In the former case of feeding the monkeys, they were rowdy and fighting among themselves to snatch food. This resulted in me getting pissed off and leaving the place, distributing less than what i originally intented.

In the second case of feeding the langoors, they were peaceful and patient for their turn to arrive and did not try to snatch the bag from me and eventually i ended up buying and distributing more than what i intented.

Attitude of Monkeys/Langoors

Monkeys suffered from "me first and i dont care about others attitude" as they wanted to have everything for themselves without caring for their fellow monkeys.

Langoors has the attitude that "I will get it later but am happy that you are getting it now" attitude as they had the patience to wait for their turn.

Explaining the title

if you have ever observe the traffic jams in India, everyone without waiting for traffic to clear wants to go first and sneaks in through every short opening that one sees. Due to lack of dividers and road etiquettes, we even encroach  on the area of road which is reserved for people coming from opposite direction. This eventually results in complete blockage and long jams.However in Europe, No one tries to take his vehicle ahead and waits for the vehicle in front to move. Road is clear and eventually traffic jams clear in less time and due to trust vehicles too move fast.

A similar attitude could be seen in queues from train tickets in India , where some are clamouring to take their ticket first and jumping the queue . Thankfully it has improved over the past years but still lot of improvements are needed.

Conclusion

Dear fellow friends, lets make the monkey mind calm and lets take up this initiative to adopt the attitude of langoor in life. We can even inspire others to be patient at queues and respect the rights of others as we respect our own. This is another experience i had while dealing with queues in India http://antarikshbhardwaj.blogspot.de/2015/04/indians-and-queue.html

The writer Antariksh Bhardwaj is a software engineer , yoga teacher and loves to travel. His hobbies has led him to travel across more than 15 states of India and 16 countries across the world.