Army claims to walk in Yeti's steps

On Monday night, as social media was lulling itself to sleep after a day of arguments and counter arguments, the Army slipped in an enigmatic tweet: Three photographs of a fresh snow drift, with a row of large foot stamps set so deep as to reveal the greying old snow level underneath. The foot, a single right one, bifurcated into a toe and a clump of other (assumed) toes.

The Army believed it had presented proof of the existence of the abominable snowman, the mystical yeti to its six million followers: An ape-like being believed to live high among the Himalayas and rarely spotted.

"For the first time, an Indian Army mountaineering expedition team has sited mysterious footprints of mythical beast 'Yeti' measuring 32x15 inches close to Makalu base camp on 09 April 2019. This elusive snowman has only been sighted at Makalu-Barun National Park in the past," the tweet said. Along with it was a picture of the expedition team flanked by senior officers. The tweet did not go quietly into the night.

Instead, it snowballed into a virtual blizzard — it has since been liked more than 18,000 times with 8,500 retweets and 2,100 comments.

The reactions range from disbelief to derision to humour: Criticism for the Army for "propagating" myths, disappointment over the post coming from a "respected institutions". It has also inspired humour, not to mention vehement support from 'Indian Army fans' who saw "no reason" why the institution should "lie". When the Sun rose on Tuesday morning, the seemingly 'credible' tweet had become a source of embarrassment even as senior officials tried to play it down.

Sources in the Army backed the claims, asserting that the discovery was based on physical evidence found on April 9, and they made it public only after ascertaining that it matched the previous theories about the Himalayan Man.

Anthropologists, however, have debunked the assertions. "The large size of the foot can be attributed to expansion of the original imprint in ice," offered Dr Raghavan Pathmanathan from the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University. "The impression enlarges if put in a loose medium such as snow, due to factors such as erosion. No one has seen physically seen the yeti since the myth came to fore in the 60s. There is no physical evidence of its presence, not even mummified remains."

The news of the sighting spread to international publications. China's The People's Daily took a dig at Indian Army in its Tweet. "Has evidence for the #Yeti finally been found? On Tuesday, the official Twitter account of the Indian Army posted photos of what they claim are footprints of the mythical beast. The post has gone viral, and many wonder if they are real. What do you think?"

And that is the question, isn't it?