Social media apps are giving celebrity lookalikes a shot at stardom
Sharmila Ganesan Ram & Ketaki Desai | TNN (THE TIMES OF INDIA; September 22, 2019)

When you return late from work, what’s home like? A) Utensils thunder in the kitchen B) The food tastes a bit too salty C) The wife is yelling D) The wife is eerily silent.

Even before Amitabh Bachchan could finish reading out the fourth option, the hospitalised 13-year-old girl pre-emptively answers on her taxi driver father’s behalf: Option D. And for a brief frozen moment after the absent “computer mahashay” locks the option, when Bachchan hands the driver a bouquet in place of a cheque for a crore, the driver watches his dying daughter come to life. Surely, it does not matter to this father that the bodyguard-flanked, six-foot-tall celebrity who had entered the cancer hospital in Pune where his daughter is counting her last days and played KBC with him wasn’t really Big B but, in fact, a small P. That’s how professor Shashikant Pedwal (left) convinces himself of his 30-year-old white lie.

Every time Pedwal, a 47-year-old Pune resident who teaches things like plumbing, welding and fault-finding at Lonavala’s Industrial Training Institute, dyes his dark French beard white and uses words like “anushasan” in that unmistakable baritone, it’s hard to find technical faults with his transformation. So complete is the illusion that Pedwal not only startles audiences when he ends his corporate events saying: “I am not Amitabh Bachchan” but also his big Tik Tok fan base who reacted to the disclaimer with comments like: “No sir, you are Amitabh Bachchan. You must be playing a character called Shashikant Pedwal in a new movie.”

With over 53 lakh followers on Tik Tok, Pedwal — who dispenses paternal, moral and seemingly government-friendly motivation on the short-video app — is the patriarch of a virtual galaxy of lookalikes who are basking in the reflected viral glory of their lacquered Bollywood blueprints. Occupants of this low-rent parallel glamourverse include Delhi-based aspiring dietitian Gaurav Arora (right) who is what you would get when you put Virat Kohli through a wash cycle, Punjab-based rustic auto driver Sushant Khanna (left) who feels covert pride when addressed as “Sallu Bhai” on duty, London-born model Alina Rai whose five lakh fans think she resembles Katrina Kaif even though she “doesn’t see it”, and Vadodara-based Jio employee Imran Jam who appears at birthday parties and weddings as ‘gareebon ka Ranveer Singh’.

Straddling the double life calls for consistency, if not discipline. Even though passengers rarely look at him closely enough to notice the rustic Salman in him, 30-year-old Khanna makes sure his fans don’t ignore him by regularly mouthing the actor’s angry dialogues in a burst of five to six videos that he posts in one go. “This takes about an hour and a half and I usually do this after coming back from 12 hours of riding my rickshaw in the heat,” says the bhai jaan from Kalka village. Not everyone is comfortable with being perceived as carbon copies. This is why 24-year-old model Alina Rai declares: “I don’t see myself as associated with Katrina or as her lookalike.” However, Rai’s newly acquired manager hints at “meetings” with Bollywood celebrities.

Arora — who has amassed over four million fans as Kohli and landed many offers including TV and gigs — frequently stumbles upon comments that ridicule him for using Kohli as his meal ticket. But he has learnt to shut them out just as he did the bullies on the cricket ground during his days in the under-16 district-level team a few years ago. “What’s Kohli doing here? Why’s he bowling with his left hand?” the seniors would derisively ask as Arora, a formerly chubby left arm spinner, got ready to bowl. “Just like Kohli sir, I’ve stopped reading and replying to comments,” says Arora, who has mastered the skipper’s “aggressive” on-field game face so much so that “people now think I am arrogant.” The 24-year-old himself nurtured the same stereotype about his “mirror image” until he met the skipper on the sets of an ad recently and was astonished to discover Kohli’s “down-toearth” self.

But imitation can be an expensive affair. Arora, an aspiring dietitian, can’t afford Kohli’s vegan lifestyle but studiously maintains a gym and chiefly fruits-and-vegetables diet regimen that keeps both his body and his pockets light. Forty-seven-year-old Pedwa — who has been honing his Amitabh voice for 30 years by watching every Bachchan movie and writing down dialogues in a notebook — has enraged his parents on many occasions with his costly obsession. Even now, Pedwal — a father of two — spends close to Rs 35,000 a month on costumes and makeup. “You’d think I am mad. I have 55 costumes in my cupboard,” says Pedwal.

The viral fame sometimes leads to opportunities. Pedwal —who is playing Bachchan’s body double in an upcoming Marathi film -- has travelled to Israel, Dubai, Mauritius and Qatar while Jam — who has yet to properly monetise his lipsyncing videos as a Ranveer Singh rip-off — hopes to commercialise his new-found love of acting. “I would love to get into the Bollywood line. It’s just a matter of getting that one big opportunity,” says the Jio employee whose caller tune speaks for his state of mind — apna time aayega.