Bengaluru: Worldwide, it may be Pewdipie that makes waves, but in the subcontinent, across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is BB Ki Vines that rocks. BB stands for Bhuvan Bam, a musician and stand-up comedian, who shoots his vines with his cellphone. His mostly funny, sometimes educative, videos are a rage among the youth.
The vines, or short videos, contain short sketches that range from comedy centring on the angst, frustrations and simple joys of the youth. The sketches have one central character, with two friends, one of them Banchhod Das Chhatriwala, whose pet name is abbreviated to something unprintable, while the other is Sameer Suddi, who tends to pronounce ‘s’ as ‘f’. And there are BB’s parents. There is also a sinister villain named Mr Hola and a mysterious woman for whom his father has the hots, named Mrs Verma. All the characters are played by Bam.
“I was introduced to BB Ki Vines last year. Since then, I have been addicted. I watch each video at least a hundred times,” says Nishchith, a management student. The coarse, jock humour doesn’t put off girls either. “Look, I normally can’t stand cursing. But in BB Ki Vines, the cursing is so natural that it neither sounds anti-woman nor even offensive,” gushes Rini, a hotel management student.
It is not all about exam blues, watching porn and girlfriend problems. Occasionally, BB comes up with a video that silences his critics, if any, and exponentially increases the number of his admirers.
The latest, titled Unfair, is about latent racism in Indian families. With a wedding invitation to his family as the referral point, BB launches into a monologue on Indian obsession with fair skin that leaves the watchers dumbfounded by the manner in which he rams the message home.
“That was awesome,” says Deepak, an IT professional, who describes himself as “the greatest fan of BB”. “I mean, we expect comedy from BB. But this was stupendous. Each time I see it, my eyes are wet,” he confesses.
Published on April 13, within a week, ‘Unfair” touched 4,79,354 views and a phenomenal 58,500 comments! The one earlier, titled ‘Memory Loss’, released four days before ‘Unfair’, logged 77,19,892 views, 3,16,370 likes and 20,275 comments.
A large number of BB’s fans are from Pakistan and even Bangladesh. As one commenter from Pakistan put it, it was BB that united the two countries. And no wonder, BB rocks!
