How a Penguin and a Punch fill the modern vacuum

If you don’t know about the seven-month-old Punch-kun macaque in Ichikawa zoo in Japan and not shed a tear or an aww yet, you are probably living under a rock. The baby monkey, who was abandoned by his mother, and his plushie orangutan, a rust-coloured Ikea toy (referred to as Oramama) is what the world is touchy about now. People are packing their bags to go see him at the zoo. Tate brothers have offered a few crores to buy him and janta-- suffering from the epidemic of loneliness and deficient in real connections, are shedding copious tears through fake eyelashes, saying he is me. This, a few weeks after netizens cried over the nihilist penguin from Herzog’s 2007 documentary, which ‘defiantly’ broke ties with its colony and solo marched to the unknown. Both are icons of an-embarrassment-of-a-modernism, that is ridden with wars, sex scandals and tariff spats. Like the penguin, many of us want to say ‘to hell with it’ and walk away silently.

In 2025, the world was freaking out on Labubus, the ugly-cute dolls who brought the kidult trend full on into the world. Young adults between 18 and 25, active users of social media, hung them on bags as charms, sold and bought them like shares and gave the world a chance to rethink on neat categorizations of childhood and adulthood, making a case for adults to be children too. That the world is miserable even to the adults is the cold reality of today.

I grew up in the 80s watching Tom and Jerry, Jamie and the Magic Torch et al. Panchatantra stories were our bedtime read. Animals were aplenty, talking ones, crying ones, wily ones and loyal ones. As an adult, I now follow the handle of @tomandjerry on Instagram, for pure nostalgia and joy. If someone sends me its sticker on Whatsapp, I immediately save it into my favourites. Our childhood cartoons and toys were of the animal world, warm teddy bears, clapping monkeys, barking dogs and we have never grown out of them. I do not remember my parents getting mushy over animal stories or dolls though. Maybe adulthood was not as chaotic, demands of optimization were far lesser, and they were not ‘multi-tasking’, capitalism’s surest route to hell.

When I now hear the story of Punch with his soft toy, I hard relate. Of course, like everyone, I love a good story, one that is filled with plots of abandonment, growing up and surviving against all odds. What else was Mowgli in The Jungle Book and Zimba in The Lion King? In Punch’s case, the world waits with bated breath for videos to drop and updates on his growing up like our lives depend on it. It is the exaggeration of the trivial-classic recession behaviour and exhaustion and avoidance of the more burning issues in the real world. The dismay and disillusionment with the real world are compensated now by heart-warming stories of these animals. And their virality ensures a cultural moment, which then becomes fodder to the brands looking for topical content. Kerala Tourism, whose Insta game is one of the strongest, quickly put up baby Punch-Oramama creative with the snout of an elephant captioned: A little lost. A lot loved. Delhi Police was not to be left behind with a lady constable-Punch creative at the India Gate with the tag you can count on us.

Punch has woken up the protective instinct in all of us. I suspect it is also a natural reaction to the helplessness the normal world felt at the contents of Epstein files. We have all been triggered and in comes Punch, the baby, whom the world has adopted over the internet. We wish to see him safe and loved. The internet is clapping for his care taker, Kosuko Shikane, to whom he is seen clinging to. A caretaker, who is taking care than abandoning or exploiting. The visuals of Punch playfully climbing on him and clinging to him have been reassuring the world that all is not lost. When Punch was hugged by an adult monkey, it seemed like a personal victory. Him eating, fighting back, dragging his support toy, sleeping with it have all thawed hearts numbed by the hate wars and power excesses.

Every cultural moment of the present times is but only a moment. It comes, it goes, it gets cancelled and gets replaced. Punch has been a godsend in 2026. Many of us now go to the comments on the post than fuss over the post itself. It is where the community assembles (like the Avengers) for collective commiseration, opinion sharing and venting. It is relieving that one is not alone in her moral angst. I don’t have to apologise for the outrage I feel towards a culture that is quick to call out and cancel.

I read Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingstone Seagull in my early teens and it has been a strong force in the way I have lived. I have quoted excerpts from it in my speeches, gifted copies to students and the allegory of a seagull striving for excellence despite the odds has been a favourite leitmotif. Then there was Appu, the cutesy elephant mascot of the Asiad games in 1982, inspired by the 5-year-old Kuttinarayanan from Kerala, who was the same age as me then. In 2019, while at NIFT, we adopted a rescue Lab named Gryffin, as a therapy dog. He still continues to melt hearts on the campus, happy with the belly rubs students give.

More than ever, adults and children both seem to need emotional support toys and plushies for their minds, bruised by a heartless world whose cruelty levels are hitting new lows. Punch and the Penguin have filled a vacuum, connected the world in warmth and left us awash with a strong feeling of connection and attachment. May we all heal.