Forget Peter Parker, India has its own Spider-Man. He lives in Mumbai's Bhiwandi

There are no radioactive spiders in Bhiwandi. No secret labs, no billionaire benefactors, no Daily Bugle breathing down anyone's neck. What the powerloom town north-east of Mumbai does have is a young man in a two-thousand-rupee costume who shows up every time the rain refuses to stop, and somehow, that has been enough to make him a local legend, a TOI report stated.

Shadab Momin didn't plan on becoming anyone's superhero. But for the past couple of monsoons, as Bhiwandi's roads have vanished under sheets of brown water, he has pulled on a full Spider-Man suit and gone straight into the flood. He wades through waterlogged lanes warning bikers about hidden potholes, pushes stalled cars out of ankle-to-waist-deep water, and, in videos that have travelled far beyond Bhiwandi, has carried children across submerged streets on his shoulders.

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It sounds like a stunt. Watch enough of his clips and it stops feeling like one.

A town that needed a mascot

Bhiwandi has long carried the nickname "Manchester of India," built on the hum of its powerlooms rather than any civic glamour. What it's better known for during the monsoon is the opposite: roads that flood in the same spots every single year, drains that choke on schedule, and commuters who've learned to read potholes the way sailors read currents.

Into that yearly mess walked Momin, camera rolling, spandex on. "In one clip, he can be heard narrating his own rescue mission, "Bus stand se paani khali karega yeh spidy", as he clears bucketloads of water from a flooded bus stand. It's the kind of line that shouldn't work as content and somehow works perfectly: equal parts filmi and functional.

Half comic relief, half civic complaint department

This isn't a one-off. During a spell of heavy rain in Thane district, Momin was filmed carrying two children on his shoulders to get them across a badly waterlogged stretch, while also helping stranded vehicles move through the flooding. He's since become a fixture of Bhiwandi's monsoon news cycle, showing up costume and all whenever the skies open up.

There's a pointed message tucked inside the theatrics, too. Momin has said his goal isn't only to help stranded residents in the moment, it's to keep asking why the same roads flood year after year, despite the crores spent annually on repairs and drain desilting. It's a fair question, and one that plenty of Bhiwandi residents have been asking long before a man in a spider suit started asking it on camera.

From troll bait to town hero

His following didn't arrive overnight. Momin built his profile as a "friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man" on Instagram, mixing genuine local civic issues with the humour and instant recognisability of a superhero costume, a combination that turned out to be far more shareable than either element alone. The scenes are often funny to watch, but they double as a reminder of exactly how hard the monsoon makes daily life for thousands of people in the area.

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He's not Bhiwandi's only local celebrity built on a nickname, the town has previously cheered on a cricketer known simply as "Superman." But Momin's version comes with a monsoon deadline attached, and every July and August, he clocks back in.

Why it's struck a chord

Part of the appeal is obvious: everyone loves a superhero, and there's something quietly satisfying about watching one show up in a town that rarely gets this kind of attention for anything other than its traffic jams. But the deeper reason people keep sharing his videos is less about Spider-Man and more about what he's standing in for, every commuter who's had to abandon a scooter mid-flood, every parent who's carried a child across a road that used to be a road.

Momin isn't going to fix Bhiwandi's drainage system. He knows that better than anyone watching from behind a phone screen. What he can do, apparently, is show up in a costume, wade in first, and make sure the story gets told, pothole by pothole, monsoon by monsoon.

Somewhere between the reels and the rescues, that's turned out to be its own kind of superpower.