Limited space, unknown people, gruelling task, and starry tantrums. These are some of the challenges Hyderabad-based Salman Zaidi had to endure after signing up as a participant in the second season of Ace of Space, a captive-reality TV series created and presented by Vikas Gupta.
However, none of those were deterrents for Salman because he emerged the winner of Ace of Space 2 a few days ago. The 24-year-old Hyderabadi claimed the title after battling it out against the shrinking walls and fearsome challenges, beating the other five finalists including Hyderabadi ex-Roadies and Splitsvilla contestant Baseer Ali.
Talking about his 73-day long journey, Salman says, “Initially though I was very interested in taking part in the reality show, I took my time contemplating it. It was my older brother, Zeeshan, who motivated and encouraged me to go ahead. Even so, my initial few days inside the house was very confusing. I was the underdog there. I was surrounded by many celebrities and people who have credible amount of work to their name. But slowly, I made friends and started to understand the game and grew more confident.”
Reclaiming his space
Interestingly, even though over the weeks his name was on top of the voting list, his journey had a fair share of conflicts, some of which he even regrets. “One of the things I regret happening in there was the nasty fight I got into with Shruti. We didn’t speak for a whole week after that. But living in captive reality, where the living space is decreasing every day along with hundreds of cameras watching your each move is quite mindboggling,” shares the Nasr School of Boys and St Mary’s College alumni.
But today, Shruti Sinha is one of his closest pals. Indeed, some of the best takeaways from the show for Salman were his friends —Baseer, Krissann Barretto and Shruti.
The social media star, who has over 200K followers on Instagram, feels that his humble background and his belief ‘Nothing is impossible’ was what made him stand out from the rest. “While I knew that people liked me a lot because of the votes, I didn’t know what my family and friends thought of me during the show. Now, after coming out, I know that they are happy and proud of me. As of now, I just want to be calm and get back into my normal lifestyle and see what all opportunities I get,” says Salman as he signs off.
