Rohit in India seeks the man-sized monkey who panicked New Delhi.

By Rohit Gupta

"I'm going down to Terrebonne Parish, Where the river surrenders to the bayou. I'm gonna set a trap, I'm gonna bag a Monkey man Gonna make myself some monkey-tail stew." — Big Rude Jake

New Delhi is a land of negotiable virtue. It is also the capital of India, inhabited by over 10,000 rhesus monkeys, and about 14.3 million descendants of the ape. Collectively, they live their lives shruggingly at 48° C.

Fortunately, before I disembarked in the city, there had been a rain shower bringing the heat down to 35° C, and rising. I was glad to step out after 17 hours in my train — The August Kranti Rajdhani Express, now with added luxuries including an intercom system that plays (aarghh) Hindi love songs. The railway station was as I remembered it from six years ago — a vast gooey curry of sweat and begging bowls. But they had repainted the signboards.

At the bridge leading from Platform 12 to 1, I noticed proud cellular phone owners ignoring the beggars, dwindled in number since the good old days, and the group of expectant monkeys who rightfully occupied the steel periphery. After what seemed like eons, I walked outside and hailed a rickshaw.

Occupying my surprisingly comfortable room, I refreshed myself, and caught some shut-eye. It was only in the evening that I called up the journalist who had done some research on the recent "monkeyman" incidents.

What happened was this: In June 2001, Delhi was hot, very hot. People often resort to sleeping on terraces, balconies and rooftops to catch some breeze because the indoors are boiling. Not everybody can afford good air conditioning. One night, a strange intruder attacked a family sleeping on the roof and before they could raise hell, he disappeared in the shadows. Eyewitness and victim accounts agreed on one thing — he had simian features and metallic claws that wounded the victims. The legend grew, and with it, the number of encores. By the now the suburbs and the central Delhi residents were living in constant terror. Some even took to patrolling the streets at night. Rumors had dubbed him The Monkeyman. Police suspected that this was the doing of some thug in disguise, but it failed to calm the furor.

"Here are the numbers of some victims and witnesses I spoke to, but it's useless, I'm telling you," said the journalist.

"Well, what do you make of it?"

"You never know."

That's the sort of thing that chills my spine. When people are uncertain what is clearly real and what is extraordinary. The only thing extraordinary is the capacity of rumor, its nature of existing even when it is not believed. Especially when it is not believed.

There is an urban legend about Spring Heel Jack, the terror of London in the early part of the 19th century, apparently a closely related mystery. A site on unsolved mysteries says that both creatures have the ability to jump from building to building in the night, and to disappear in no time. Also:

Spring Heel Jack: Some aspects of the reports vary wildly from person to person.

Indian Monkey Man: Some aspects of the reports vary wildly from person to person.

I decided to see some patients who claim to have been injured by the "monkey-man." Apparently, the zoo has denied responsibility in the press. No missing monkeys (or men). I am denied access to the hospitals by the police, who explain their efforts to curb the rumor. It is insane — over 50 people were arrested for just that, including a mad doctor who was trying to scare little children.

"This is all stupid. Some bhenchod robber gang, okay? No monkey-wonkey," said the inspector, sticking to the police's general opinion.

I staked out the hospital where some of the victims were admitted. I accosted a doctor in the parking lot. This doctor, who spoke on the condition that I do not name him, was non-committal but said, "I am no forensic expert to tell you whether the claws that gave these lacerations were animal or metal, but these guys will live. Just don't quote me ok?"

As if he told me something new. I read the headlines. I knew that.

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These events do not seem to be a characteristic of the Indian subcontinent. There is a serial of urban legends — Spring Heeled Jack, Mothman, Owlman, and El Chupacabra. But typical to India is the monkey symbolism. Judging by the reports, I must confess that the simian intellect has been considerably under-rated.

The picture of a monkey-man reading a book is available at a lot of places in India. People vouch that it is Lord Hanuman poring over the Ramayana. Buy it and worship. They believe that this photo was shot by a tourist at a cave in Mansarovar three months ago. A color-photo lab in Hyderabad says they've had it since 1991 and it was shot in Ayodhya, (a key city in the Ramayana). It seems that people want to believe the irrational.

Members of the Indian Rationalist Association, who purportedly are called upon by the media only when something irrational happens, have called these incidents a "mass delusion and hysteria." They have said this with a lot of "stress," this being the second time somebody has actually bothered to look them up. The last irrational event on which the Indian Rationalist Association hit the news was their own 50th anniversary.

Oh, I forgot: There was one more irrational event, when millions witnessed Lord Ganesha sipping milk through his elephantine nose, all over the world in 1996. Scientists called it a "capillary effect," millions called it a miracle and organizations called it mass-delusion and hysteria. Yet another incident which never became very popular was the one concerning Lord Shiva where the shivalingam (literally: Shiva's penis, the worshipped object) started changing colours and developed a white and red figure. This was also in Delhi.

So one can safely speculate that residents of the capital have a fertile imagination, and they may have used some on the monkeys that accost them everyday.

Delhi's monkey history is rich and varied.

They are known to steal secret documents, sabotage hotlines and break power supplies. An army chief and his officers, as well as senior civil servants at adjoining ministries, now sit in caged rooms after files containing top secret documents were found strewn in corridors and power cables to computers containing sensitive data were snapped. Visiting ambassadors have been threatened by screeching primates swinging down from the trees. An army major was hospitalized for rabies injections after a female monkey bit him, and staffers at the foreign ministry contracted jaundice after a monkey drowned in the water tank.

Exterminating the animals is not an option. When captured, monkeys are ferocious creatures, and you can't mess with them on Tuesday, Hanuman's holy day. So instead, the government hired other monkeys to exterminate their gods for them. Some time ago, they hired four big monkeys (at a month in bananas) to help them handle their problems with tens of thousands of smaller rhesus monkeys.

Last year a man died from a blow on the head by a flowerpot dropped by a terrace monkey in Delhi. In the state of Orissa there is a monkey who steals money and buys booze. The Delhi monkey has also been known to imbibe, but he steals the booze instead of the money.

Another theory is that the monkeys were trained and sent by Pakistan. A wild-life specialist said it wasn't a far-fetched one. Both parties used them in the 1971 war to cross lines as suicide bombers. But then Indians have always blamed Pakistan for everything.

There must be a solution, you think. But we can't kill monkeys, they represent the Lord Hanuman, just like we can't kill cows, peacocks, crows, eagles, buffaloes ad infinitum. To quote Mark Twain: "Indians are a curious people. They hold all forms of life sacred, except human." PETA does not do much business here.

There could be another angle to this story. An angle other than a "gang of crooks," an "alien creature," Pakistan, or "mass-delusion."

By now I know that monkeys do not need to be part-men to be dangerous.

"Rhesus monkeys are invading Indian cities. Officials report that more than half of the nation's 1.5 million monkeys are now living in urban areas, chased from their traditional homes by widespread deforestation. Officials report increasing conflict between humans and monkeys."

— Asiaweek

Most of the casualties of the monkey-man weren't even touched by him. They were people who scrambled to run away from a unknown entity chasing them, trampled under foot. People who jumped off buildings to escape. People who did not "exactly" see him. When attacked, all these people were in some state of dizziness — asleep, drowsy or just dreaming on the rooftops to beat the Delhi heat. Some beat each other up in the darkness in self-defence.

Do the thousands of monkeys in Delhi sleep at night? We know where they've come from — the jungles we felled to build offices of uncertain departments. Jungle to jungle. None of them have "flaming red eyes and green lights glowing in its chest," unless the creepy little experiment with the rhesus and a glowing jellyfish has finally gone awry. But they may be very pissed. We're probably not showing our elders enough respect.

I did not find a conclusion except that the monkey-man is 90% media, 10% some smart dude, and not an iota of truth. Or perhaps, the monkey-man is plain vanilla monkey, no man. I was ready to return. My guest-house cafeteria packed me a breakfast parcel early in the morning and I took a rickshaw to the railway station. I wanted to eat after boarding the train on time. I entered and proceeded to climb the overbridge leading from Platform 1 to 9. My knees were a distant cousin of jelly. There were four monkeys looking my way, and some on the roof sitting nonchalantly. But I knew they were watching. Two moved, blocking the path ahead. There were very few people around at 6:30 a.m.

Thanks to the works of Douglas Adams, we now know that dolphins are the most intelligent species on earth, and that earth is an experiment conducted by mice. The possibility that some stray eddy of independent evolution has yielded monkeys capable of enjoying alcohol, stealing money, preventing smoking, and intentionally attacking people is not lost on me.

One of the rhesus scowled when he saw the breakfast parcel I was carrying. I hadn't paid much attention to it until now. It must have taken me about three seconds to commit the small sacrifice. I threw the box towards the monkeys. They tore it open in no time — a bread and butter sandwich, and two bananas. Now they were on the roof, above a growing pile of empty boxes and peels.

I scampered across the bridge to my platform, and was relieved to find the train waiting.