Adapted from an old folk tale
What are
wicked ghouls made of? Made of?
Scorpion tails, wings of moths and fatty rats
Monkey's paw, spiders whole and heads of bats
These are wicked ghouls made of, made of.
It was a rainy Saturday night in 1955. We were playing cards after dinner in the common room of the hostel. Clang of tea-cups and cigarette smoke filled the air. During a pause in the game, Deepak Bhatnagar, my friend who hailed from Lucknow, narrated the following story.
The Lucknow University campus, situated in an isolated area, was connected to the city by an infrequent bus service only during daylight hours. The students had to travel to the city either on foot or on bicycles - motor bikes were rare those days - if they wanted to see a movie because of the absence of cinema halls near the campus.
There were two routes to the city, one circuitous and the other comparatively short. On the shorter route there was a bridge called the monkey bridge, which used to be deserted after seven o'clock in the evening. Strange sights were seen there and stranger things used to happen to those who dared to cross it after nightfall. Many of them were dumbfounded for life, others went insane and the few brave ones preferred to keep their experience to themselves.
Manoj Mathur, a fresher, brashly declared he did not believe in ghosts or spirits. He offered to go to a night show in the city and return unscathed through the monkey bridge.
While returning after the show, when he started approaching the bridge he felt slightly scared. It was a new moon night - pitch dark - even the starlight was obscured by clouds. He was relieved therefore, when he saw an old woman sitting on the roadside at the entrance to the bridge and selling peanuts. A small kerosene wick-lamp was burning in front of her - instead of lighting the area, it only accentuated the darkness. He wanted some peanuts from her. The old woman, completely wrapped up in a soiled white cloth gave him the peanuts. He made the payment and demanded the balance. When she extended him the change, he saw that it was not the hand of an old woman, but a monkey's paw. Looking up, he saw the old woman had the same disinterested sleepy expression on her face. He was overcome by fear, dropped the peanuts and change and started running.
He was comforted by the sight of a hackney carriage at the middle of the bridge and the coachman stopped on hearing his shouts. When he got in and settled down on the comfortable seat, he was sweating profusely.
The coachman asked him, "Babuji, why are you so upset?" Manoj narrated the incident which had just happened and told him how lucky he was to have found this carriage.
The coachman then turned back and asked Manoj, "Babuji, were the old woman's hands like these?"
Manoj noticed to his horror that they were not the hands of a man but monkey's paws. When he lifted his eyes and looked at the face of the coachman, he saw that it was a gorilla's face and not that of a human being. Manoj fainted on the spot.
The next morning, Manoj Mathur was found lying unconscious in front of the hostel gate at the university campus.
