The True Tree World of Golden Langurs

By the time I caught my breath, the light had dimmed to a misty-sepia-postcard: beautiful to see, inadequate for photography. I was in an evergreen forest in Assam during the post-monsoon rains, and my days were about two things. Waiting for showers to end and then venturing forward in saturated, hard-to-see-in light. Both were connected to water — if not raining, the water would stay suspended on spectacles, windshields, camera lenses, our necks, and our impatience. I realised, too, that when looking for a particular monkey in the rain, you need to believe in lady luck.

Looking through dripping forests for the rare golden langur (Trachypithecus geei) felt akin to chasing a myth. Shouldn’t they be lit up like torches from afar, pulling us like lighthouses in the dark? Shouldn’t a simple turn of the neck show us beauteous, golden animals sitting in their private, leafy bowers? But as we discerned, animals know when to be visible and when to hide, and post-flood Assam meant a lot of hidden monkeys.

We travelled to Chakrasila, a biodiverse and stunningly beautiful forest sanctuary. Gentle hills rose around us. We trekked some distance, skipping over little streams and walking around ravenous leeches. Our steps had slowly turned laborious because the heat was killing us: a slowly drawn-out, willing death. We had halted at a rare lookout point with enough gaps to see through. The forest felt like a tight embrace of sal trees and lianas. It seemed like there was nothing but forest in the whole world. An iora darted into the bushes behind us. A warbler whizzed past in a brown tumble. There were no monkeys.

As the hours passed, my guide suggested I look for golden langurs in nearby rubber plantations. These unusual animals have a painfully small range in Bhutan and parts of Assam. The presence of broad rivers may have inhibited their widespread movement, and their current distribution is in forest fragments in Manas, Chakrasila, Chirang, and Kakoijana. This makes every individual important and renders suitable habitats (rubber plantations, forests, national parks) worth protecting for the species. But protecting old forests, forest corridors, and plantations is a challenge for a state that loves its tea gardens, agriculture, oil exploration, and now, oil palms.

In the late afternoon, we left Chakrasila and moved towards rubber plantations — a pleasant green blur dotted with sodden paddy fields. A blue-tailed bee-eater caught a paper wasp at the side of the road. A black-hooded oriole sat on a teak tree with pock-marked, skeletonised leaves.

As the blazing sun finally came out from behind the clouds, I spotted a Nephila spider spread like a queen in her web between bushes below the rubber trees. Her mouth parts were red and black, and her body shone as if made of metal. Her dead husbands, orange and tiny, lay suspended below her. It was an unforgettable, bejewelled moment with true, sunlit colours. It was fitting to see the first sunrays of the day snared and glittering in a confident spider’s web in a green place full of silence.

The next day, we went to Kakoijana, a community-conserved forest area with a resident population of langurs. “Welcome to Kakoijana, home of golden langurs,” the entrance said. In a country saturated with images of majestic lions and Jungle-book Shere Khan tigers, it is nice to see the occasional simian become an adored flagship species. And though the langurs eat buds and new leaves of the mature rubber trees, the village development committee involved in langur conservation doesn’t consider this a loss. The community area was spread out like an extended park. A troop of schoolchildren ran wild, shrieking, full of the hope and happiness we associate with free, open spaces. Deeper inside the area, we went over a little bridge, a rain-swollen stream, and around a patch of supari trees with happy pigs squelching in the mud. And as suddenly as the light dims during the monsoon, a quiet fell on us as we came to a dark, deep patch of the plantation.

There was movement in the trees, loosening water droplets that came down in loud silver swooshes. A figure arrived on a branch and then sat in repose. I was looking at a monkey-shaped creature, but it had a halo — molten lava in the form of a monkey head. A golden langur. It was close to orange, and the golden halo seemed to separate each hair in beautiful relief. This langur looked so incandescent it was like looking at the shimmering filaments of an old tungsten bulb. I could see why people liked this animal.

The monkey sat quietly, its black face deeply calm. The height it was at gave it immunity from the drama at ground level and seemed to provide it with a certain nonchalance. I understood why these creatures are revered. Our eyes had adjusted to the humidity, and it was as if Christmas lights had been turned on in the trees. A group of nine golden langurs were in that hushed, green place, making no sounds.

Suddenly, a whoop ripped the silence. Two brown shapes were jumping up and down and through the branches. They were rhesus macaques, their faces distorted in mischief. They were as loud as the langurs were quiet. Uncomfortable with their loud, naughty cousins, the langurs wanted to leave. They became very still and then sprang suddenly on other trees, with the power of a tight spring, coiling and uncoiling.

For hours in the dripping forest, we watched the shining langurs. The rhesus watched them too. I was beginning to discern males and females and tightly bonded mothers and young ones. The golden langurs walked up and down the branches of the rubber trees, well-worn highways in the sky.

I was especially interested in a beautiful female with arms over her head, holding a branch, almost like a gibbon. Her legs were spread out in a confident, womanspreading pose — a queen in her element amongst the trees. She reminded me of the Nephila spider. “Look at her,” I whispered, “So elegant and powerful.” She suddenly let out a long, steaming stream of silver pee, which came down, curving like a snake. We ducked. She was calm and nonchalant. Clearly, the tree world was the true world. And the ground was just the background, and it could be pissed on.

And in the true world of the trees, there was so much to see. A mother held her baby tight, vertically against her body. The males had a flap of skin near their genitalia: “a mekhla chador (Assamese skirt),” my friend whispered. The female I had watched the most held up the edge of her tail, searching for parasites, looking like a glowing philosopher. Other langurs deftly explored young leaves, their fingers clever like weavers, picking just the leaves they chose to eat. When they looked at me, their gaze was frank and appraising. It was the fearless, gentle look of a monk who knows many truths. And certainly, these animals knew how to find pockets of peace in their corner of the world.

I would witness an unforgettable scene later, in Raimona National Park: a female golden langur and her baby nearly fell from a sal tree. As the kid tumbled, the mother dived to grab her baby, grasping him behind his neck. The grasp-embrace was a mother’s hold — full of patience and forbearance. Her hands were strong but also gentle. For that moment, they were the most capable hands. With other animals and their qualities, one may often feel envious. Tigers have strength, herons have patience, ants have teamwork, fungus has opportunism. But with monkeys — so close to us with their thumbs, their wrinkled foreheads, and their care — one may occasionally feel they are better than us. This was one such moment — the mother doing her thing with minimum fanfare but enormous, gentle focus.

This image isn’t in my photo reel, but I wish everyone could see these animals for what they are — shy, thinking, gentle, patient, funny, elegant. Only if we know about this animal can we face the fact that with a small range, the golden langur is likely to face threats in the future.

 

One of the threats could be oil palm plantations. “An assessment of the feasibility of oil palm by ICAR-Indian Institute of Oil Palm Research found that all four districts under Bodoland Territorial Council are suitable for it. These areas overlap with golden langur habitats,” says Narayan Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Biology and Wildlife Sciences, Cotton University and Member, IUCN Primate Specialist Group, South Asia. What we need instead, he says, is to establish corridors so that the langurs can have an interconnected habitat. “Corridors can be established between Kakoijana and adjoining forest fragments, which had connectivity till the recent past,” he says.

The other aspect is food diversity. It’s great that langur populations manage to live in rubber plantations, but they may require more variety in their diet. My question to Narayan is whether a forest fragment or a monoculture can meet the monkey’s needs.

“Available resources shape the feeding ecology of any species. As rubber is an introduced and exotic species, overreliance on it is not good for monkey gut health. A detailed study on the chemical composition of leaves being eaten, their phenophase (life cycle of the leaf, when it is tender or mature) and seasons in which they are feeding is important,” he says.

For arboreal animals like golden langurs that rarely come to the ground, the tree is the true world and coming down is the end of a civilisation. To further their civilisation, we must ensure trees remain standing and forests remain biodiverse — with a variety of leaves and buds for them. However, which trees we keep standing, or plant, is clearly important too. In the case of oil palm expansion, the oil palm tree would mean the end of the langur’s tree world.

Watching the animals whoosh through their trees, I thought about where the langurs would go. In the wet, crushing heat, men were dressed in shorts and chappals. I had covered my feet and legs fully and lathered on concoctions to drive away leeches. I was envious of the bare shins around me — every centimetre of cloth felt like a punishment in the humidity. I saw slim grey leeches standing on their ends, their mouths turning left and right in pure, blazing hunger, and told myself it’s better to boil than be bitten.

When I was finally done watching the langurs, I yelped with a sharp pain — there was a huge, engorged tiger leech on my ankle. But the calmness of the langurs had rubbed off on me. It felt like a blood sacrifice for the revered monkeys and for a glimpse of their true tree world, and I no longer minded.

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