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![[Urban Legends]](23lead.jpg)
![[Urban Legends]](23lead.gif)
Lindsay Pereira
Steel-tipped claws the size of McDonald's celebrated French fries. The ability to leap across large terraces in a single bound. A face more apelike than human. And no, underwear not worn on the outside.
That description pretty much puts Delhi's now familiar 'monkey man' into perspective. Not that everyone would agree, though. Some say he's a robot; others, an ape who's been reared by human beings -- kind of like 'The Jungle Book' for little monkeys.
Irrespective of who or what the monkey man is, however, he fits into a well-worn pattern of tales familiar across all nations, and known as 'urban legends'.
In a nutshell, these tales are about people you could know, but don't. They are great stories to discuss over dinner, and could be eerie, hilarious, horrifying, or a mix of them all. They are usually about things that happened to a friend of a friend of a friend. And, though you'll never hear one directly from the friend in question, you can bet your life there will be a hundred others swearing it really happened.
Sounds a bit confusing, really. To get back to the infamous monkey man though, some psychiatrists have compared the whole episode to a similar one in Nigeria, over a decade ago. Only, it wasn't monkeys causing a panic attack back then, but genitals! A group of Nigerian men were actually convinced that their penises would disappear if they touched a stranger. And yet another urban legend was born.
Not that stories like these haven't bothered us before. Those old enough will remember a coolie named Nagaraj, arrested five years ago in Karnataka for murdering 23 women. Others will recall the famous Stone Man of Kanpur who, around 30 years ago, went around smashing the heads of sleeping pavement-dwellers with a hammer. The hype and myth surrounding both was tremendous.
Not all urban legends are false. Take the tale of a man being carried away by balloons, for example. Sounds too incredible to be true, but it did happen. In 1982, a man called Larry Walters tethered his lawn chair to surplus weather balloons, and actually soared to a height of 16,000 feet.
Thing is, after being told and retold over the years, even factual data can get distorted enough to render the final version completely different from the original. Think of it as a big game of Chinese Whispers, where the whole planet joins in. Tall tales seemingly take on a life of their own, spreading through communities, and even continents, like wild fire. The names change, as do details, but the legends do get around.
For example, there's an urban legend from Brazil, about 'harvested' children ostensibly adopted by foreign agencies, only to be put into comas and have their organs removed and sold. One from the UK proclaims that no one is allowed to die in the House of Commons. Needless to say, the Internet has loads of stuff on these topics be it related to animals and death, or food, religion, sex, and even pregnancy.
Among the more famous ones to have reached most ears, there's the girl who used sugar-water to straighten her hair and was gnawed to death by rats while she slept, the exploding toilet and the hidden snake in a fur coat. There's also the dead boyfriend, a body in the room, the woman who was buried alive, and the face in the window.
Of the more recent ones, remember the 'Forward or Die' death threat chain letter, the 'Bill Gates has $1000 for you' hoax, or the kidney thieves in Asia?
To cut a long story short, I'm not afraid of the monkey man. Then again, just in case you meet him, don't quote me, will you?
Additional Resources
-- Urban Myths
-- Urban Legends and Modern Myths
-- Rediff Urban Legends
-- Urban Legends Research Centre
-- Don't Believe Everything You Read
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