Meet Pawan Kumar, A Social Media Star Who’s Redefining Being Proud Out Loud Both Online And Off

But Kumar, who works as a business analyst and voice modulation trainer at a telecommunication company in Gurgaon, says he will not stop posting videos; his purpose in life is to bring happiness to others.

“I post videos and pictures on my social media handles not to gain publicity but to spread smiles and happiness with my little acts of stupidly. I love to travel across the globe. Though I wanted to be a flight stewardess, I could not get through. Now I work  for the whole year, accumulate my leaves and save money to fund my foreign trips every year,” Kumar told HuffPost India. 

Kumar’s videos on TikTok, where he has more than 66,000 followers, are infectious in their excitement. In many of them, he’s lip-syncing and dancing to Bollywood songs, often the woman’s lines. He also posts videos of himself speaking to his followers or dancing in foreign countries.

Video-sharing apps such as TikTok are enabling Indian users, many from small towns, to act out their Bollywood fantasies, helping some of them learn English and also providing a safe space to many young people to express themselves in ways that would be frowned upon in the public sphere.

Most of Kumar’s videos—like those posted by the millions of Indian users on TikTok—are shot in the places he frequents every day and convey a joyous sense of subversion of gender roles and assertion of his right to occupy public spaces. There are videos of him dancing on a footpath in his housing society or at an office event to cheers from his colleagues. In a few, he seems to have convinced an amused barber or beauty salon worker to act as the recipient of his dramatic expressions of love or mock outrage.