Since its first video in June 2015, Shudh Desi Gane, the YouTube channel that parodies Hindi film songs, has only increased in popularity along with its creator. Salil Jamdar is credited as the actor, singer and writer for each production uploaded on the channel.
Whether he is “Being Salman”, pointing out India’s unshakeable habit of seeing western culture as “cool”, or doing Shah Rukh Khan’s signature move of arms slowly being raised in embrace, one thing remains the same across videos – Jamdar doesn’t mince words. Peppered with expletives and comedy bordering on the offensive, Jamdar’s lyrics make the viewer laugh out loud, mostly at themselves.
The channel has more than 134,000 followers on YouTube. Each video gets more than one lakh views, with the Gerua parody video, at the end of which Khan himself makes an appearance, garnering more than a million clicks.
Khan’s appearance in the Gerua spoof was a sign that Jamdar had arrived. Khan’s production house, Red Chillies Entertainment, approached Shudh Desi Gaane in 2015 to collaborate on a parody of a song from the under-production Dilwale. “It was extremely humbling working with him,” Jamdar said about meeting Khan. “He didn’t behave like a stuck-up star at any point. So simple and normal. Working smoothly and taking instructions from a team much younger than him. The best thing was that he did not treat the shoot like a joke just because it was a parody.”
The collaboration with Red Chillies meant that Jamdar had to be “less brutal” and clean up his language when he was writing the lyrics for the Gerua spoof. “I had to change little things, like, instead of saying ‘ch****a banega India’, I said ‘popat banega India’,” Jamdar said. “But to their credit, they didn’t make too many changes. I’m not sure how this will work with other celebrities though. No parody is ever going to hurt Shah Rukh Khan’s image. But other celebrities are much more sensitive towards how they are portrayed.”
The process for each song, from conceptualisation to creating the final product, takes about 15 days. A team of about five people works with a different director for every song to bring these concepts to life.
Jamdar earned his parody writing experience as a writer with Shudhh Desi Endings, a YouTube channel that creates animated spoofs to give popular Indian films an alternate ending. Making fun of Hindi films came easy to Jamdar, but he found himself getting bored and restless working behind the scenes. “I wanted to do something that showcased my talent, especially something related to music,” said Jamdar, who has been trained in the performing art at the Whistling Woods film school in Mumbai. So when the idea of starting Shudh Desi Gaane came about, Jamdar took it up as a creative challenge. “I wanted to perform and act and sing,” he said.
The first song released by the channel was a comment on the formulaic approach of Vishesh Films, the production company run by the brothers Mukesh and Mahesh Bhatt, towards every film. The spoof lists ever cliché encountered in a Bhatt production – the marathon lip locks, the drunken brawl, an almost abusive love.
Since then, Jamdar and his team have taken on hit tracks, such as DJ Waley Babu, Meri Maa and Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. According to Jamdar, a song should either be trending at the time or be a classic in order to qualify for a send-up.
“The song Meri Ma [from the film Taare Zameen Par] really worked because it’s a song that is almost a classic,” Jamdar said. “Everyone has heard the song and has emotionally connected with it. While, on the other hand, we chose DJ Waley Babu based on the fact that it was topping the charts.”
The Shudh Desi version of Meri Maa, plugged as an “awareness video” for all Indian mothers, has Jamdar copying actor Darsheel Safary’s look from the film and educating mothers everywhere about the more A-rated activities that school boys indulge in when away from their prying eyes – be it watching porn, getting stoned or skipping lunch to enjoy a bucket of KFC. DJ Waley Babu, the new party anthem blaring out of every loud speaker these days, was a much more graphic production. “We have to write our jokes keeping in mind which song we are using, what’s the feel of the song,” Jamdar explained. “DJ Waley Babu required us to be extremely crass. The song called for it.”
Some of the more difficult shoots include the experience of wearing a body suit for a parody of a song from Salman Khan’s Sultan and wearing lehngas weighing 30kgs for the shoot of Prem Ratan Dhan Paayo. “I had to hold my pee for six hours!” Jamdar said. “The body suit made to look like Salman for the Sultan song would take forever to wear again. I huffed and puffed and sweated in that suit.” Jamdar had a better time in the lehnga. “It was heavy, but at least I wasn’t feeling suffocated,” he said.
As popular as he might be, Jamdar is trolled heavily on Twitter and other social media platforms by the fans of celebrities he pokes fun at. “The day I joined Twitter, the Emraan Hashmi fan club found me and abuses flowed free from all directions,” Jamdar said. He soon learned to turn a blind eye to such criticism after he realised that they were short lived. “The same guy who called me a ch****a for making fun of Hashmi, praised other videos, so I stopped letting it bother me after that.”
Jamdar claims that he is capable of putting aside his likes and dislikes toward any song and just “do the work” when required. “It comes down to the concept really,” he said. “We barely made any changes to the song Luka Chhupi that we did for independence day. We were going for something that was not supposed to be a parody at all.” Released on August 15, the Shudh Desi video of Luka Chhupi from the film Rang De Basanti is a departure from the usual. Jamdar, dressed as an Indian Army soldier, pays respect to the sacrifice of Indian soldiers while making light of unnecessary killing in the name of patriotism, religion and race.