Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly collection wherein NPR’s worldwide staff shares moments from their lives and work around the globe.
Years in the past, once I lived in Delhi, a madari — a monkey handler — and his two performing monkeys used to return to my neighborhood on a bicycle. I liked to see them however was unwilling to be a patron. It’s unlawful to make use of monkeys for tips in India, although the observe stays standard and authorities are inclined to look the opposite method.
Often, the grandparents in my neighborhood known as out to the madari. They haggled with him over a number of hundred rupees, after which for a couple of minutes, the madari made his pets salute, somersault, hug or pull one another’s tails. The children spilled with laughs. The elders appeared happy too.
Usually, although, their act had no takers. The madari nonetheless got here by, asserting his arrival by shaking a pellet drum. On one such lean day, he observed me trying on from my third-floor balcony. I shook my head. He and the monkeys moved on.
On a current go to again to my previous Delhi neighborhood, I noticed this madari on a motorbike together with his monkeys. They appeared acquainted however I could not be certain if it was the trio I knew from three years in the past. I solely noticed them fleetingly from my cab. They usually all turned their backs on me.
I suppose I deserved that.
See extra photographs from around the globe:
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- Greetings from Alishan, Taiwan, whose pink cypress forests supply timeless magnificence
- Greetings from Odesa, Ukraine, the place a Black Sea seashore gives respite from conflict
- Greetings from Shenyang, China, the place employees type AI knowledge in ‘Severance’-like methods
- Greetings from Palmyra, Syria, with its once-grand lodge named for a warrior queen
- Greetings from Mexico Metropolis, the place these canines experience a bus to and from faculty
- Greetings from the Galápagos Islands, the place the blue-footed booby exhibits its colours
- Greetings from Afrin, Syria, the place Kurds danced their hearts out to have fun spring
- Greetings from Dharamshala, India, the place these Tibetan children had been having the most effective time
