Journalism of Courage
French Spiderman Alain Robert will be climbing up one of the tallest towers of the city on Sunday
If nothing seems more intrepid than clambering from one ledge to another while ascending a 240-metre skyscraper with no safety precautions along with the expectations of enormous crowds,he has a fresh confrontation to mention. The drive that I had a few hours back while coming to the city from Mumbai was much more unsafe. Chances of deaths are more on those roads for them than for me on the towers,more because a fall is in no way an option, says Alain Robert also known as the French Spider-Man who with his climbing shoes and bare hands has scaled some of the highest towers across the globe,Eiffel Tower,the Sydney Opera House and the Montparnasse Tower to name a few.
With a dozen public events lined up in a year,and random escalades over beautiful buildings Roberts practices on his bedroom ceiling of 40 sq metres everyday,while walking parallel to the ground holding on to the roof. We tend to think that higher the ascent,difficult the climb,which is not the truth since height is not the concern. At times a single glimpse is enough to contemplate if climbing would be possible depending on the structural intricacies. A few often say they come to see me fall down but I perform for the rest of the 99 per cent who enjoy seeing me there. I am a showman for whom the brain is a much more superior machine than those devised by it for our safety, he says,adding with a smile,And I am incredibly fond of living on the edge,which besides hanging hundreds of metres high,has had me being felicitated by the Prime Minister of a country on one day and killing cockroaches in the jail on the next.
