‘GOING VIRAL HAS MADE ME MORE CAUTIOUS. BUT IT HAS ALSO MADE ME MORE TOLERANT.’
SOURCE: KEYA MADHVANI, HEAD OF MUSIC AND LIFES‑ TYLE PARTNER‑ SHIPS AT
TWITTER INDIA pre-wedding video, featuring her dancing while getting ready, has
What do you do when you’re in the middle of a dream wedding in Thailand and your husband-to-be is late for every event? “I was getting really upset about the delays, so my friends and videographer decided to distract me,” says Amisha Bhardwaj.
They decided to make an impromptu pre-wedding video of Bhardwaj singing and dancing to Sia’s ‘Cheap Thrills’ as she dressed and did her make-up.
In the seven weeks since that video went viral on Facebook and YouTube, it has earned Bhardwaj friends from around the world, admiration from family, and haters “I was in Cambodia when my photographer called to say this particular video was going viral,” says the 26-year-old event manager from Noida. “In three days it crossed 1 lakh views, then 2 lakh, 5 lakh…I was shocked!”
“I got hundreds of friend requests on Facebook, from Dubai, Australia, Canada, Bangladesh – some positive, some negative. Someone from Canada told me her daughter’s favourite pass time was to watch my video. People from Dhaka and Bangladesh said newspapers there covered me and that was a pleasant surprise.” Bhardwaj says her mother-in-law was more excited about the video than she was. “My husband, Pranav, praised my confidence in front of the camera. His positive attitude helped me ignore comments that said my husband should have died before watching the video, or before marrying me. I started to find those comments funny.”
“A lot of women have messaged me saying they wish they could have done something like that and not cared so much about what people say,” Bhardwaj says. “I hope my video reminds brides to have fun and just be themselves. You can’t make others happy if you’re not happy.
Aranya Johar , 18, wrote ‘A Brown Girl’s Guide to Gender’ in March. It has changed her life in ways she couldn’t have expected. When she performed the spoken-word poem at an open mic night in Mumbai, no one expected the video to go viral. “I’ve had people come up to me asking for a selfie, while I was in my pajamas, eating paani puri on the roadside,” she says, laughing. “I keep myself updated on issues like demonetisation or garbage disposal. I have discovered that, to my followers, my opinions matter,” Johar says.
“So if anyone asks me about the beef issue, I discuss how the beef ban has affected southern India where beef is part of the culture and where a lot of the local town economies depends on beef. Also how our export economy is being affected.”
The best part about her sudden fame, she says, is the messages from men, asking how they can contribute to helping women feel safe.
“I like to think it has also broken the misconception that millennials are selfish and indifferent. Yes, we enjoy using filters on Snapchat. That doesn’t mean we don’t care about our country’s issues.”
You’re from the north-west? I know someone from the north-west. Her name is Pinky Singh. You know her? No?!! Pinky Singh!!!” Merenla Imsong’s YouTube video, ‘Presumptuous Chinky assumes the North Indian Way’, was a take on the absurd questions she faced as a youngster from Nagaland studying in Delhi and later working as a fashion designer in Mumbai.
“People didn’t seem to know that Nagaland was a state; they routinely confused it with other north-eastern states,” says Imsong, 29. “My mom is the queen of sarcasm. She will make a hilarious comment with a straight face and leave the room. I got my funny streak from her. Also I did some amateur theatre, so the expressions in the video also came to me naturally.”
What really surprised Imsong was the comments section.
“It turned into a battlefield of people supporting me and people criticising my way of addressing the issue,” she says. “What I had meant as a joke became a polit-
When actor Shah Rukh Khan posted a selfie taken with fans at Symbiosis in February, people seemed to have just one question: Who was the beautiful girl just behind him? That girl was Saima Mir, 22, a Kashmiri studying communication design at the Pune campus. “I was taken aback when I saw the picture,” she says.
An introvert not very active on social media until then, Saima didn’t know how to deal with the torrent of messages, posts and the articles that were written about her online. “My Instagram followers shot up in few days,” she says.
In the weeks that followed, Saima got calls from production houses, and offers of movie roles. Because she is Kashmiri, people on her timeline started to fight over India vs Pakistan. Saima logged out of social media for two weeks. When she returned, she says, she had made up her mind to use the attention constructively. ical sketch for a lot of people. Some got angry, some said thank you. Someone said it was a nice way ‘to get back’! I just wanted to have some fun.”
My fame became another box I was being forced into, she adds. “I worry that it has made me more cautious. But I am glad that it has made me more tolerant. I remember when I was in school, I had a south Indian teacher. I now realise that I also didn’t know exactly which state she came from. Yes, borders around some places can get blurry. But you should at least know that Nagaland IS a state.”
“This fame was sheer luck. I feel like it’s my responsibility to utilise it in the right and meaningful way. I keep sharing things about which I’m passionate - art and Kashmir. I want to show everyone how Kashmir still retains normalcy despite so much political tension,” Saima says.
“I feel happy when people from around the world enquire about visiting Kashmir. We’re living in the time where people need more positivity and need to focus on similarities not differences — that’s what I’m trying to do through social media.” Erum both belong to, someone sent a message describing an incident in which an unnamed woman was threatened by a taxi driver with a conspicuously Muslim name. He supposedly drove against her will into Batla House in Jamia, and she barely managed to escape.
Erum replied saying that this was obviously fake news, since cars cannot even drive into this part of the neighbourhood, and proposing to take anyone on the thread into Jamia to prove it. She didn’t get any takers, but Mazumder got in touch with her afterward.
“It’s everywhere,” said Erum about Islamaphobia. On her way home from her husband’s family’s Eid celebration in Moradabad last year, for the first time she can remember, Erum didn’t bring her share of mutton. Dadri is not far from the road back home. “You never know when your mutton will become beef,” she said. funny video ‘Presumptuous Chinky assumes the North Indian Way’ has
The month of Ramzan is about controlling all the base instincts. The biggest jihad you may fight is the evil within you.