One would have thought that tales of a giant monster skulking in the forests would not have transcended the realm of bedtime stories told to threaten recalcitrant children, but the “Mande Burung” story has been given such a spin that both the national and international media have given it a serious look, and in the process, have lent the story a certain stamp of authenticity.

If the seas of Europe are inhabited by mermaids and sirens, if Scotland is home to the Loch Ness monster, the Garo Hills in Meghalaya, it goes, gives refuge to a huge ape-like creature known in the local dialect as ‘Mande Burung’ or jungle man — a beast that is said to be the Indian counterpart of the American bigfoot, the Australian yowie or, closer home, the Nepalese yeti.

Now hair from this elusive beast has been dispatched for DNA analysis to Oxford Brookes University in central England. With the results eagerly awaited here, local lore and ‘first-hand’ accounts are all that interested parties — including several well-regarded news publications from the West — have to go by.

Take for instance Julius Marak’s story. A curator in the Arts and Culture Department of Meghalaya, he claims that way back in 1988, his son Renting Momin and his friends had seen Mande Burung in the nearby jungle of Rongjeng in the East Garo Hills. “They said Mande Burung seemed to be about 5 feet tall even when he was sitting down and he resembled an ape. When they saw the creature, they pelted it with stones and it fled from there,” recalls Marak.

... contd.