Desi dreams in foreign land!

When Canadian doctor Frank Gregoire (above) sang the famous Hindi song Tum Hi Ho from Aashiqui 2 for his wife Simran Malhotra (far right), little did the newly-wed couple know that the sweet gesture would make them internet stars. The song, uploaded 10 days ago on YouTube, has crossed 40 lakh hits so far. It was sung by Frank for his wife on their wedding day that took place in Baltimore, Maryland, US, last month. “This whole thing is so dreamlike,” says Simran, when we asked her about the reactions they have received. “Frank says it best: ‘We are just regular people and we never thought in a million years that this would be possible. We’ve been going to the hospital every day, working as we usually do, come home, eat dinner

— and then see what the world is saying about us! We have families in Canada and India trending social media for us and keeping us in the loop’,” says Simran, adding, “We are not that into social media, except Facebook, so we’re just learning a lot!”

Simran met Frank in 2012 in the US and recalls how Frank could not stop talking about Bollywood on their first date. “Frank has been a fan of Indian people long before I came into his life. On our first date, he asked me, ‘Have you seen K3G, you know Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (in his accent, of course), it means sometimes happy sometimes sad’. And it still remains one of my favourite memories,” she says, adding that her fami- ly also gets excited when Frank talks in Hindi. “I taught Frank a few lines like ‘Sat Sri Akal’, ‘accha hai’, ‘theek hai’, ‘chalo’, ‘thoda’, and ‘khushi hui apko mil ke’ in March 2015 when we went to India to visit my grandparents. ‘Khushi hui apko mil ke’ made him a star at our engagement party in Delhi.”

Ask Simran if she now wants Frank to sing more Hindi songs and she says, “Now that I know he can do it, he’s basically set himself up for the rest of his life to serenade me with desi songs! I am looking forward to him singing the Hindi cover of All Of Me (John Legend) with the Hindi verse. I’ve been the one singing this verse to him whenever we have listened to the song this whole year — that was the song that we first danced to at our reception.