"Delicate sensibilities, and the usual administrative incompetence, have made a shambles of efforts to contain the “monkey menace”, as newspapers have labelled it. Victims of Delhi's rapid sprawl, which has subsumed their forest habitats, the monkeys can indeed be irritants. Many locals deem them incarnations of the Hindu monkey-faced God, Hanuman, and so feed them, which has made them demanding. They have been known to terrorise food-sellers, get drunk on stolen whisky and break into public buildings—including the Defence Ministry, which they ransacked one night. Workers next door at the Foreign Ministry contracted jaundice after a monkey drowned in the water-tank."