[Reader-list] Monkey Man: Delhi's first Cyborg?

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Some Thoughts on the Monkey Man: Delhi's first Cyborg?

Here are a few stray and random thoughts about the Monkey Man phenomenon 
that has beset parts of East Delhi.

  A brief re-cap for those on this list who are not from Delhi. a couple of 
weeks now, sightings of a strange creature, who some say is a primate,some 
describe as humanoid, masked, hemeted or furry, not very big, (five feet or 
so) with flashing red and green eyes,and extraordinary powers of movement 
(the abilitiy to jump between buildings and fly) has been menacing eastern 
Delhi and adjoining the adjoining industrial areas of  Uttar Pradesh 
state.This figure, called 'Monkey Man' or 'Naqabposh' (the masked one) 
appears at night and usually attacks people sleeping on rooftops. He/It is 
described as unusually strong and he leaves scratches on the skin with 
sharp metallic claws. In a tv interview a scared resident of east delhi - a 
young man attributed the monkey man's powers to a 'computerized system' : 
flashing bulbs, and an array of buttons that he presses to help him fly 
away. Is the 'monkey man' or the 'masked one' Delhi's first cyborg?

As of now three people (including a preganant woman) have died in  night 
stampedes that occurred when someone raised an alarm in their vicinity. A 
mob of vigilantes, patrolling a crossroad, have attacked and seriously 
wounded a person driving a car late at night because he had a helmet in his 
back seat (they thought that he might be the 'helmeted' attacker), several 
people have turned up  with scratch marks and other injuries at clinics and 
hospitals and quite a few people have been arrested on the charges of 
spreading rumours. 3000 armed policemen and 'Rapid Action Force' 
paramilitaries are patrolling large parts of East Delhi. Vigil is being 
maintained, not only in neighbourhoods, but apparently also on public 
telephone booths, where people make calls to police control rooms with news 
(hoaxes or apparently real reports) with news of 'Moneky Man' sightings.

Parts of Delhi are beseiged by a strange fear..

What I find amazing is that in the entire discussion about the Monkey Man, 
no one seems to talk about this palpable sense of fear that many people 
feel in our city. The 'Monkey Man' may or may not be a real threat, but a 
strange combination of atavistic primate imagery, high tech gadgetry and 
the darkness that engulfs the city during power cuts, have created an image 
of the other powerful enough to have people stampeding to death and want 
intense police patrolling in their neighbourhoods.

The character of violence in our city -  bombs in the cinema, masked and 
mysterious  terrorists in public spaces, sudden and unexplainable attacks 
by policemen - is so impersonal and yet so intimate, so routine and yet so 
endemic, that it seems to have demanded the existence of an embodied locus 
of fear. The twist of 'computerized technology'  signals the deep roots 
that the technological imaginalry has takne into the unconsious life of 
Delhi. And as Radhika Chopra, a socioloigist has said, this is one way in 
which the 'invisible parts of the city' those dark, power cut and mosquito 
laden swamps east of the river, make themselves heard and known.

  Perhaps this is what the 'Monkey Man' is all about. The congealment of 
routine violence and the invisible making itself visible, picking strands 
frorm folklore, mythology, and a science fiction imaginary that percolates 
into the slums through television serials, b grade horror movies comics and 
other forms of popular culture.That cicruclates through rumours and random 
anonymous calls made to harass the police from public phone booths. This is 
an urban contemporary form of cultural expression making sense of the 
violence of everyday life. I think it needs to be understood and treated 
with respect.The way in which the mainstream media has been treating the 
phenomenon, first with derision, then with condescension, and finally be 
asking for strict police measures only means that the elite are not the 
terrorised in the city. The 'Monkey Man' will never step into their 
barricaded colonies. Fear only belongs to the outer edge of Delhi.

As I drive from karkardooma crossing to Patparganj depot, i see a forty 
foot high statue of an armed and vigilant Hanuman, the monkey god of hindu 
mythology.This popular and benign monkey divinity, whom one calls upon when 
confronted by ghosts and unknown terrors of the night, seems hardly a match 
for the diminutive humanoid simian wearing a helmet who has been 
terrorising Mandaoli - an urban village that nestles under the shadow of 
the Karkardooma Hanuman statue.

  I wonder what other terrors the city has in store for us, a ghostly car 
that mows down  the people who sleep on pavements,  androids who gas slums, 
telephone spirits who spread whispers of fear, vampires  in night 
shelters  and cyborg terrorists battling it out with robo-cops in the old 
city. The nights of Delhi seem strangely portentious.Menawhile the 
deployment of armed, helmeted and masked paramilitaries - the 'Monkey Men 
of the State' continue, as do the search orders and the raids.And the 
injuries from close brushes with the police forces, outnumber the scratches 
of the Monkey Man.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI: The New Media Initiative
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 052, India
www.sarai.net