BENGALURU: In the quiet village of Rayara Doddi in Channapatna taluk, Bengaluru South district, a bond that transcended species left a community in tears this week, after a monkey sat beside 85-year-old V Parvatamma’s body, appearing to grieve and refusing to leave.Video clips of this unusual sight soon went viral on social media. Parvatamma, who died of a heart attack Monday, had long been known for feeding a troop of monkeys that strayed into the village from a nearby Anjaneya Temple. When her body was kept at home for people to pay their last respects, one of the monkeys arrived and stayed through the night. “It climbed beside my mother’s body and hugged her. It looked like it was weeping,” her daughter Premamma told TOI, recalling how the animal remained unmoved even as the crowds gathered. “Someone offered it a banana around midnight. It ate it and came back to be by my mother’s side.” The ‘vigil’ continued until daybreak, when the family, needing to proceed with the cremation, called in a snake catcher to safely remove the animal. The monkey was later released near the temple. Belonging to a farming family, Parvatamma often visited the Anjaneya Temple with her husband Venkataiah, feeding monkeys during her visits. Even after his death in 2010 and her move to live with Premamma near Channapatna, she would return to the village and the temple time and again, though age eventually limited her visits. “Though she generally feared animals, she made an exception for these monkeys,” Premamma said. The unusual ‘farewell’ was captured on video by her nephew Abhishek and others in the village, and has since been widely shared on social media.
