'Spiderman' looks for a rope

Dev S Sukumar. Bangalore/ Sept 7.2009

ON MONDAY, ‘Monkey King’ aka 'The Indian Spiderman' Jyoti Raju came to Bangalore hoping to meet the state sports minister and ask him for money to buy a climbing rope. The minister wasn’t in his chamber, and Raju drifted to the climbing wall at Sree Kanteerava Stadium, where he stopped by before taking the night bus to his home, the fort town of Chitradurga.

Raju is an internet celebrity, but he doesn’t know it – or doesn’t realise what it means. Over the last three years, the illiterate labourer has been interviewed by some 30 TV channels – national and international – who’ve featured his impressive skills on the fort walls and boulders of Chitradurga. One clip shows him scaling a wall, only to stop half-way and, using his palm as a pivot, flip his body around. Another shows him dangling off a cross-beam some 30 feet high with one arm – all without being secured by a rope, or any safety aid.
These exhibitions roughly come under the ambit of new-age sports like sport-climbing, buildering and parkour. With all three enjoying high visibility online, Jyoti Raju’s internet clips have elevated him to near-cult status – page views from around the world exceed 500,000, with viewers exalting his spectacular abilities.

But all of that has done little for him materially. He lives in a one-room home near the fort and works as a casual labourer on construction sites, spending his free time climbing at the fort. Half the money he earns he spends on feeding monkeys at the fort. His acrobatics, and his relationship with the monkeys (“there are 161 monkeys at the fort,” he says. “They come to me whenever I call.”) have earned him the name ‘Kothi’ (monkey) Raju. On YouTube he is celebrated as the ‘Monkey King’ and ‘The Indian Spiderman’.

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RAJU’S climbing career, if it might be called that, began five years ago when – hurt by a family that had adopted him – he decided to commit suicide at the fort. “That was the first time I’d gone to the fort. I climbed up a boulder, went up some 50 feet,” he said. “Then I looked down and decided I had to climb higher, because if I jumped from 50 feet I would only break my bones.”
He then climbed up to a higher perch, and just as he was about to leap off the edge, noticed that a huge group of people were cheering for him. “It was a matter of two seconds,” he says. “They were all shouting and clapping for me, so I felt better. The next day I returned to the fort and saw a monkey climbing a boulder, and I thought – if he can do it, so can I. And so I started climbing the boulders and fort walls.”

Until then, Jyoti’s had been a story that had replicated itself in hundreds of Indian families. He’d left his home in Madurai when he was seven – he’d beaten up a classmate and was terrified that his parents would whip him. So he ran away to Bagalkot, where he spent a few years working in a sweet shop. He left because the owners were abusive. “I wanted to go home,” he said. “So I started walking. I was famished. Occasionally I would raid honey bee hives and sugarcane farms. Finally I reached Chitradurga, where this family adopted me. I was their errand boy and watchman.”

One day a small tiff caused him great anguish. His adoptive family accused him of taking Rs 100 from an errand they’d sent him on. Depressed, he walked to the fort to kill himself.

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RAJU’S skills, however impressive they may seem, aren’t good enough to fetch him a place in the state climbing team. For one, competitive climbing differs from scaling boulders for fun. Besides, Karnataka has the best sport climbers in India, and during the last state championships, he came fifth. He has trained on and off at a wall in Davanagere, but Chitradurga neither has a wall, nor can he afford a rope or other equipment. While everybody acknowledges his skills, he is still some way below the best.

“He’s used to the rocks of Chitradurga, and he isn’t able to adapt to the wall,” says Praveen CM, national champion. “He could get better if he spends some time training for competition.”

National coach Keerthi Pais, who has produced many of India’s best climbers, acknowledges that Jyoti is a skilled climber, but reserves his opinion on how far he can go. “Unfortunately, he hasn’t made the Karnataka team because there are so many good climbers here. But if he’s able to participate at the nationals, he could do well. He can get better if he trains regularly, and on a nutritive diet. I will send a recommendation to the minister for some equipment for him. ”

Both Keerthi and Praveen, however, insist that Jyoti’s ropeless antics are too dangerous. “The TV channels have made him look like a joker,” says Keerthi. “They’ve exploited him, but given him nothing in return. I will never allow him to climb without a rope – it’s just too dangerous. The last thing you want is children imitating him.”

But maybe Death doesn’t scare him. Risking his neck is no big deal, for he has already been at a point when he rejected life. He has been to the edge – it holds no terrors.

In the climbing world, there are two concurrent philosophies. Competitive climbers prefer to use safety equipment. Then there is the other world of ‘solo’ climbers, who rarely compete, but go off to clamber up cliffs and skyscrapers using nothing but a chalk bag. Many suffer crippling injuries; some die; but the best among this world attain cult status in the climbing circuit and – in the YouTube age – around the world.

As it turned out, the media coverage had one effect – his parents found out about him and turned up at Chitradurga. When he returned he was given a grand reception. “But I couldn’t stay there at all,” he said. “There was nothing in Madurai for me, so I returned to Chitradurga. I keep in touch with my parents, however.”

Jyoti Raju is India’s first online climbing celebrity. The celebritydom – however temporary or ephemeral it might be – is because of his acrobatics without safety aids, and that qualifies him as part of the brotherhood. If he had climbed the fort with a rope, the online videos might not have merited a second glance. Without his ropeless antics, Jyoti Raju would have been a nobody, just another illiterate labourer from an abusive childhood who is eking out a living.
“I need a rope,” he says aloud. “If only I had the right equipment, I could show what I am capable of.”