Chitradurga: He is no Marvel comic super hero that lives in the imagination of men, but a 22-year-old flesh-and-blood character who can scale a 300 feet wall, dangle upside down glued to walls and jut out at 90 degree angle, all without the spiderman paraphernalia!
Meet Jyothiraju, the Indian Spiderman who is among `must-to-be-watched' list of tourist attractions in the little town of Chitradurga in Karnataka.
Far from being the image of the Lee-Ditko created western character, this tanned-sinewed youth, sans the costumed blue and red webbed apparel and one who neatly tucks his hair in place with a band, is a rather rustic version of Spiderman, but one with skills close to the fiction hero.
The school dropout who once contemplated suicide, today displays rare bravado as he scales up vertical walls with his bare hands, dangles his body upside down with just a hand rested against a wall all 300 feet up in the air without a harness or the superman glue or sticky spiderwebs to take care.
He demonstrates his inimitable agility by scaling the walls of the fort in a flash and walking up vertically in a jiffy. His manoeuvres as he hangs himslef like a bat on a scaffolding, leaves many gaping.
He completes the task in a manner that demonstrates a skill, by large unknown.
A former construction labourer who was adept at scaffolding climbing, Jyothiraju says that he learnt the art by watching monkeys climb. His interest saw him imitating the simians, earning him the title of 'Kothiraju' or the
Monkey king by the locals.
The youth said he began practising his acrobatics four years ago before he mastered them well enough to even have tourists gather around and watch his skills, many of them demanding an encore, to brush away that look of disbelief.
A native of Tamil Nadu and settled in Chitradurga, the man has even been honoured with an award by the district administration, apart from the loads of applause he earns from tourists both national and international ones visiting the place and capturing him on camera.
Raju says he improvises his stunts to match those of the superhero, but he has to do it sans all the mechanical web shooter, the spider glue and the strong spiderweb.
Bitten not by a radiaoctive spider, but by a passion to excel, his aspiration to be a world class climber has seen him enter wall climbing contest in Mumbai and winning it too.
Comments
0 comment