HUBBALLI: In an instance of great bonding, a three-year-old boy has made friends with a group of wild primates. A group of langurs waits for the kid to wake up in the morning everyday to play with him. If he delays to get up, they barge into the house and pull him out of the bed.Samarath Bangari is now the wonder boy of Allapur village near Hubballi. The videos of Samarth playing with a group of langurs and sharing his food with them are now viral on social media.
Mallikarjun Redder, a relative of Samarath, recalls how the bonding between langurs and the boy started. “One morning, Samarath was eating roti outside his house. A langur came down from a tree and snatched the roti. The curious boy went inside the house and brought a bunch of rotis for the group. That morning his parents tried to separate the boy from the group, but the langurs tried to attack them. Since then, the boy is allowed to play with the langurs throughout the day,” he says.
Interestingly, the same group of langurs, which are found in the village, are not friends with anyone else. When a child of the same age tried to go near the langurs, the latter gave him a warning sign of attack, he said. “Visitors who come from Mysuru, Tumakuru and other places suggested us that we help maintain the bonding between the boy and langurs as many think of them consider it as a holy bonding,” he added.
Nanda Bangari, mother of Samarath, said: “I get worried when my child is surrounded by langurs. But the langurs get angry if they don’t see Samarath. So far, they have not harmed him. We and some villagers are around him whenever there are langurs.”