It's a jungle out here

Yesterday the monkeys came. I heard the loud swishing of palm leaves as they swung from tree to tree, followed by their distinctive whining chatter, and my trembling heart readied for battle.

It's not that I'm not used to monkeys. Where I lived in Delhi I've known monkeys to sidle in through an open window or balcony when they think no one is looking and snatch half a dozen peaches or a bunch of bananas. I've seen a monkey open the fridge and steal eggs. I've even witnessed a monkey amble up to a trundling ice-cream cart and boldly point to an ice cream. Even parliament house has them, only no one notices too much because they so resemble our netas.

But those are city slicker monkeys with funny faces.

Here they're savage jungle beasts with very black, very ugly faces set in a halo of unkempt hair, and even white teeth which they will bare at you in a sneer of utter contempt. When I first moved in here, an enormous male was in the habit of appearing at the window above my kitchen sink in order to stare at his reflection in the glass pane. Suddenly I would see this huge gorilla-like creature (almost five feet tall) filling up the open window which only a moment before had been full of the lazy blue sky and a single palm tree. King Kong. I tried to shut the window, he tried to grab my hand. I noticed it was tiny and very delicate, more like a gnarled black claw. And it felt very dry.

The further away you go from the city and civilisation, the closer you get to the jungle. This is something I have only learnt recently. When I opted for the Simple Life, I had this quixotic notion of nature, which consisted almost entirely of beautiful trees and birds, peace and harmony. Call me stupid. 'The woods are lovely, dark and deep,' Frost said, not mentioning the snakes and hundred other strange creatures that must lurk in that lovely darkness.

But nature is not the blissful idyll of romantic poets. It's wild and untamed, it's savage and cruel. In my garden one morning a crow attacked a fat frog. It pecked it and pecked it and the poor frog shrieked and shrieked, hopping this way and that to get away from that relentless beak. The gory yet monotonous drama continued all morning till the creature at last was dead. I had a long black snake once, chasing frogs in the undergrowth in broad daylight. It was killed two days later by my neighbour's dog. Crows will sometimes drop dead rats in your path. Once an eagle dropped a live chicken only inches away from where I was sitting, enjoying the sunset. There was an angry scuffle – a sudden frenzied beating of wings – and then the eagle and his prey soared up into the sky again.

And I came here for the peace and quiet.

Yesterday the monkeys came, but all that happened is that one of them broke my papaya tree again, stuffing its ugly face with the leaves. Luckily they didn't break any roof tiles this time. And I was grateful that the little baby monkeys didn't enter the house to crap and piss all over the place as they did once. Nor did dozens of them form clusters at each window, forcing me to run out of the house shrieking for help. And I was thankful I was not sitting on the garden bench when a stream of piss fell out of the leaves in the cashew trees above.

Today after days of sunshine there's rain falling softly. I can see through my window how beautiful it all is, lush and green. And I'm only just able to sustain the illusion that this is paradise after all.