Happy Birthday to My Childhood Crush, Akshay Kumar

Chura ke dil mera goriya chali, was the song that made me his fan. It’s his birthday today. I was feeling lazy to sit and pen down my thoughts. Not at least today. I didn’t want to write, but when I got to know, that it’s Akshay Kumar’s birthday. I had to write a post.

I think I am going to keep this one short and sweet, hopefully. My previous posts mention that I’m that kid from the 90s. Akshay Kumar, Shahrukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, and others were some actors that had gained popularity during this era and rose to fame through their acting skills. They’d become household names in the early 90s.

Now as a kid, you don’t really understand what being someone’s fan meant. Yet, if someone would ask me who my favorite actor was, I would say it’s Akshay Kumar. I’m not kidding. I must be hardly 6, when people asked me that question. And upon being asked why he was my favorite actor, my reply would be, I love the way he fights. One violent kid I was. No one will believe that now, because I’m an introvert now and don’t believe in talking unnecessarily and refrain from having fights. So yaa, that used to be my answer and I genuinely loved the way he performed his stunts. I think, he was the only actor besides Ajay Devgn in that era, who performed stunts and was not just known for his chocolate boy image.

Not just his stunts, but his songs also made him famous. Who can forget ‘tu cheez badi hai mast mast’ song, that had created controversies, because it was a song eve teasers started singing while a girl would pass through. Yes, I remember a lot of things from my childhood, even though I wasn’t that old enough to understand things, because of the elephant memory that I have. That was something my family was really proud of because I could memorize things very easily. I don't think they've been proud of anything else after I grew up. 

I remember, how I would side khiladi, and not anari, while the song ‘Main Khiladi Tu Anari’ would get played on TV.  During vacations, while I would visit my maternal grand mom’s house, my cousin, my brother and I would discuss a lot of movies. Would listen to songs on TV, besides playing name, place, animal, thing. These discussions would mainly be about Akshay Kumar and we would share stories we’d heard about him from schoolmates or tuition friends. We were all so shocked to find out that he was a waiter in some hotel before he rose to fame. He also taught ‘Karate’ as per our knowledge before being a movie star. Yes, that used to be our topic of discussion. We were each other’s Wikipedia in those times.

He continued doing films, some were hits, and some were flops. But, that didn’t stop him. His comic timing is something I love. From the early 2000s, he did more movies with director Priyadarshan and most of these were comedy movies. That’s when he shifted focus from stunts to comedy. Not that he wasn’t doing comedy scenes before that, but I think, he bagged full-fledged comedy roles only after Hera Pheri happened.

After he was done experimenting with comedy movies, he turned his focus towards doing biographical movies. Like Airlift, Rustom and worked on acting in films that carried a social message like OMG – Oh My God! And his recent release Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. After starring in about 100 movies, he finally received national film award for best actor for his film Rustom in 2016.

All the movies he has starred in has had one song that’s been popular and stays in our playlist. I have a whole playlist on my phone that has all the famous songs from his movies from the 90s to his last movie. It was only two days ago, that I was listening to his songs on one music channel and the thought popped into my mind, BOSS where did he get all that energy to dance from. I literally felt like sending him a DM on his Instagram account asking the same. There were two songs that got played back to back which made me wonder that. The songs were ‘bholi bhali ladki’ from ‘Sabse Bada Khiladi’ and ‘Dekho Zara Dekho Barkha Ki Jhadee’ from ‘Yeh Dillagi’. Oh! and I love his chocolate boy image in this movie. <3

He sure has been one versatile actor that Bollywood has had from the 90s to the present date. May he continue to prosper and continue entertaining us through his movies. May he live long. Happy Birthday, Dear Akki (Akshay Kumar), my childhood crush. <3