Siddo, of course, would slink home, change, wash his face and re-emerge as himself. Affecting complete innocence he would join the search for the now absconding miscreant. Once out of costume he would enthusiastically spread the monkey man story.
Not surprisingly, the Maz. Dock monkey man was never caught although all the children knew his identity and eventually shared it with their parents. It was the first time I realised how easily people can be frightened and how fast their fear can spread. Panic follows not just inevitably but also comprehensively.
The next monkey man I heard of was actually a woman or, in fact, a girl. No, let me be honest, it was a ghost. At the time I was living on Colville Road in the Nottinghill Gate area of London. It’s a small nondescript street and its only importance is its proximity to Portobello Road, the home of one of London’s better known antique markets.
Now Portobello Road is also where the Electric cinema is located. It’s an old victorian movie house famous for the off-beat films it shows. In 1983 I was a regular visitor to a festival of Louis Malle films. What I did not know is that according to legend the Electric sits on the site of what was once a victorian orphanage.
“Mind the child” was the strange warning that tipped me off. It came from the little old lady in the delicatessen across the road where I stopped to buy an ice cream before heading for the cinema. I thought she was nuts and at first didn’t bother to ask what she meant. But then curiosity got the better of me.
“What do you mean?” I questioned although I was by then half out of the door.
“The cinema’s haunted” she said, cackling with glee. “By a little girl. Probably no more than five or six.”
It transpired that the little child had been strangled by a female equivalent of Mr Bumble probably because she asked for more. Since then her ghost has lingered on the premises and now, a century and more later, it haunts the Electric cinema. Louis Malle’s films had apparently got on its nerves and the child was suddenly restless.
For the next two weeks – that’s how long the Malle festival lasted – the child’s ghost would make sudden appearances up and down the Portobello Road and then, just as soon as it was noticed, it would de-materialise. People claimed to have seen her inside locked shop fronts rifling through the merchandise. She was reported to have entered restaurant kitchens and finished the soup. One old man even thought she had sat on his lap as he rested on a pavement bench.
The funny thing is it didn’t all happen at night. Often the sightings occurred at dusk. Within days the area was terror struck. Trade on Portobello fell drastically, shops started closing early and the street was deserted after dark. Of course, the Malle festival flopped.
Months later when all fear had blown away – and presumably the little girl had returned to her grave – it was said to have been a Halloween lark. Perhaps it was. Or perhaps it was the handiwork of a dozen little British Siddos who knew how easy it is to frighten people and how gullible the frightened can become.
I don’t know if our monkey man is a modern day Siddo but certainly Siddo would admire his talent and be envious of his success. Anyone who has half of Delhi petrified has made an amazing impact even if it will eventually and just as swiftly pass. In normal times rational people thinking rationally would reject the very concept of a monkey man. It’s not just illogical, it’s totally impossible. But the power of monkey men is that they make rational people think and behave irrationally. They convince you that things are no longer normal and the ordinary no longer applies.
Perhaps this is why the monkey man I recall best is one that visits me whenever I return from a horror movie. He inhabits by imagination and plays on my fears. For hours afterwards he pops out of lonely corners, lurks behind half-open doors and occupies the dark room I’m about to enter. Oddly enough he vanishes when the lights are turned on and the next morning, when I remember how he held me in his thrall, I feel foolish.
He’s a figment of my imagination and I – and I alone – keep him alive. Yet he has the power to terrify me and I feel helpless before him. That’s not as contradictory as it first seems. It’s also the key to understanding Delhi’s monkey man.
The Key To Understanding Monkey Man
The first monkey man I ever came across was probably my nephew Siddharth. At the time he was in his teens and living in Mazagon Docks in Bombay. It’s a small, tightly-knit community confined within a well-defined campus. Siddo, as he is called, would put on a naga mask, his mother’s old wig, cover himself with a tatty blanket and adopt a hollow ringing voice. Thus disguised he would, after dark, knock on people’s doors and terrify them. Few, if any, guessed who it was. Despite the obvious amateurishness of his act they were easily taken-in. Panic would spread with phones ringing to alert neighbours to the terror stalking the corridors. Within minutes the dockyard police would be summoned and with whistles blowing furiously – and perhaps the yard hooter as well – a full search undertaken.
Hindustan Times / India | Karan Thapar - June 1 2001
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