Hanuman: The Monkey God and Guardian

By Sadhika on

A few nights ago, I had a strange dream.

We were all huddled in my childhood home. My husband was there. So were my aunts, uncles, cousins — people who now live scattered across different cities and time zones. In the dream, we had returned to that home, but the world outside had changed.

Monkeys ruled it.

Not the occasional ones that swing past the balcony and steal leftovers from the trashcans outside the house. I’m talking about massive hordes of monkeys. They attacked humans, raided homes, overturned flowerpots, screeched into mirrors, and even flung steel lunchboxes down from windows with the flair of revolutionaries. Every few weeks, an alarm would sound across the neighbourhood, warning us of the impending invasion of a particularly violent troop of a few hundred monkeys.

And every time that alarm rang, we would do the only thing that made sense: lock every door, board up the windows and gather in the puja room, and chant the Hanuman Chalisa together, and if we were lucky, the monkeys would fail to find an opening into the house or give up on tearing away the wooden planks from the windows to leave in search of a house that was easier to get into.

Yes — we were invoking Lord Hanuman, the monkey god, to save us from the monkeys. The irony is not lost on me. 

When I woke up from this bizarrely vivid dream, I couldn’t stop laughing. The image of my family chanting the Chalisa while an army of monkeys tried to break in, felt like a post-apocalyptic movie, only instead of hiding from mutant zombies, we were warding off rogue primates with verses dedicated to their divine ancestor.

But the deeper I thought about it, the more I realised that this dream had done what dreams often do: cut straight to the core of the absurdity and truth of the human condition.

In Sanskrit, the mind is often likened to a monkey — “Markata svabhava”, they say — always jumping from one branch to another, restless, curious, unstill. But Hanuman is not that monkey. Or rather, he is, but tamed by discipline, loyalty, and unwavering focus on something higher — Lord Rama.

In Hindu mythology, Lord Hanuman is a most paradoxical figure. He is: (a) the embodiment of bhakti (devotion), (b) the master of buddhi (intellect), (c) the symbol of shakti (strength), and the servant of dharma (righteousness). In the Ramayana, Hanuman is the one who flies across oceans, who uproots mountains, who finds Sita when all others fail. But his real power lies not in his might, but in his self-control, his humility, and his clarity of purpose. He is the monkey who has conquered his monkeyness and the fact that he is divinised shows us what it means to transcend.

So when we chant the Hanuman Chalisa — especially in times of fear, chaos, or “invasion” (whether by thoughts or threats), we are essentially invoking the highest version of ourselves. We are reminding ourselves that the mind can be both wild and wise, that within the jungle of our instincts lives the potential for spiritual discipline.

Faith is not always logical or subjective. Sometimes it is archetypal.

There’s something deeply Indian about invoking a monkey god to protect us from monkeys. But then again, what is faith if not an allegiance to the deeper pattern even when we understand little of it? 

Lord Hanuman is not just a monkey. He is the monkey who remembered who he was. The one who flew to the sun because he thought it was a fruit, forgot his powers, and then rediscovered them in the service of something higher. In the Chalisa, we sing of him as a protector, a healer, a remover of fear and ignorance.

So perhaps the dream is reminiscent of the fact that the forces that seem wild and threatening may carry within them the seed of their own resolution. That the same energies that cause fear, when channelled with devotion, can become your greatest guardian.

So what do we do when the monkey alarm rings? We lock the doors, we sit still, we hold hands, and we chant. Not to erase the chaos without, but to reorganise the one within. And maybe, the monkeys pass by. Or they sit down quietly under the mango tree, and listen to the Chalisa, rapt.


Image: Ancient wall art depicting Lord Hanuman in a temple in Hampi, Karnataka.

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