Why Spider-Man Has a Chokehold on South Asians
Peter Parker isn’t the richest, strongest, or smartest. Yet, the subcontinent and diaspora remain obsessed with the nerdy teen from Queens.
“I am Peter Parker,” Aditya Patil, a 23-year-old who works in IT in Mumbai but moonlights as Spider-Man, confessed to The Juggernaut. At nights and on weekends, he switches out his thick glasses and hides a mop of black hair beneath a custom-made Spider-Man suit. He’ll scale a wall or crawl on top of a bus, the city his backdrop as his cameraman dutifully captures every shot.
Sometimes, the cops are less than amused. “‘Bro, why are you doing this stuff? Who are you?’” Patil recalled them shouting at him. “I’m not a threat to you,” he’ll reply. “I’m just shooting this for Instagram.”
But there’s a reason that he, like so many from the subcontinent and beyond, is (unhealthily?) obsessed with the masked student-turned-vigilante, far more than Superman, Batman, or any other superhero. The Juggernaut spoke to fans and experts around the world, including the creator of the Indian Spider-Man, Pavitr Prabhakar, to find out why.