The courtyard of the two-room home in which 25-year-old Ramdas lives and shoots his videos is situated off a dirt road in the village of Madguda-Gopalpur in Uttar Pradesh.
They depict him delivering flying kicks as he makes blood-curdling cries, aiming rapid-fire punches at a metal basin held by his sari-clad wife and twirling a set of nunchakus.
Upending the notion that the key to success is location, location, location, the man from Mirzapur district has notched up 484,000 followers on Instagram and attracted 270,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel since he started posting in early 2023.
His followers, like me, are fascinated by the unlikely story of how Ramdas transformed himself into India’s Bruce Lee – or Chotta Bruce Lee, as he’s known to fans both in his village and on the internet.
I have travelled from Kolkata to do a photo shoot with him and find out more about how he decided to style himself like the Hong Kong martial arts film hero who died in 1973.
“I have watched all his films and liked all of them,” Ramdas said, as he drove me to his home on his scooter. Many of the people we passed nodded at him appreciatively. Some even waved and called out “China” or “Bruce Lee”.
“People will know me and I will become famous like him and make India proud,” he said. “In the process I might also make some money.”
For now, though, despite his significant social media following, it is obvious that the money is not rolling in.
Ramdas’s home is spare. It has a cot, an almirah, a clothes rack and two chairs and a large vinyl poster of Bruce Lee. There is also a large poster of him posing as Lee from the time he was 16.
Scattered across the courtyard is martial arts equipment fashioned from old truck tyres, tree trunks, gunny sacks filled with sand, empty gas cylinders and rusted iron sheets.
Around 2016, after watching the Bruee Lee film Enter the Dragon, Ramdas grew his hair out and started practising martial art routines he saw in Lee’s movies.
“I used to go to the ghats and open spaces outside and practice there, not much at home,” he said.
But it was not until early 2023 that he started posting clips on YouTube and Instagram.
Across India, rural health and fitness content creators are gaining followings by focusing on accessible, home-based workouts, traditional nutrition and desi-style training using minimal jugad equipment.
Their potential market is enormous. In India, 95% of surveyed users, as per a YouTube survey, watch Reels daily.
That is the audience Ramdas hopes to tap into. I asked him whether he makes some money out of his Reels on YouTube. “Once in a while they send me certificates and plaques,” he said, but that is about it.
Ramdas borrows from various schools of karate, kung-fu and martial arts. He makes his own nanchakus and wushu ( a three-section staff similar to the nanchaku) from plumbing pipes, aligning to the famous Shaolin Kung Fu school.
He also practices Wing Chun, a style that relies on close-quarters combat, rapid-fire punching and flip-kicks. As I watch, he demonstrates the one-inch punch, a technique popularised by Bruce Lee that delivers a devastating explosive burst of kinetic energy from a distance of zero to one inch.
“I practice around one-two hours every day,” Ramdas said. His wife Sanju joins him when he makes the videos and also has a channel of her own.
The next day, we shot at his courtyard and the newly constructed ghat by the Ganga.
Every time he starts his routines, Ramdas makes it a point to offer a short prayer in front of Bruce Lee’s poster.
As we stroll to the ghat, he points to the family boat.
Most of Madguda-Gopalpur’s 2,000 residents are boatmen-farmers from the Nishad community. Ramdas’s family – his mother, his wife, his three brothers and their wives – work on leased farmland on the banks of the Ganga, opposite to their village, growing various kinds of gourds.
If the going is good, the family makes around Rs 12,000 a month,.
“Everyone in the house is OK with me doing these videos even if it means I cannot give my full time for the fields,” Ramdas said.
After seeing his channel, residents from neighboring villages have come by take martial arts lessons. “They want to be like me, train with me, get fitter,” said Ramdas. “This thing improves life expectancy.”
Gorakh, a young man who helps Ramdas on his shoots, added, “Every youngster around here follows him on social media and after seeing his videos want to be like him, copy him. A few parents from neighbouring villages brought their kids to get martial art training from him.”
Back at the house, his wife Sanju breaks into some of the martial art routines that Ramdas does.
We are soon forced to call it a day. “We cannot take photos inside the room as there is no light,” Ramdas said. “The power tripped after yesterday’s rains.”
Before I leave, Ramdas offers me a wholesome lunch of sticky ration rice (“that is the best we can get”), arhad dal and mashed potatoes. After a hectic day of shooting, it goes down quite easily.
Soumyendra Saha is a street and documentary photographer living in Konnagar, a suburb of Kolkata. He is a one-time software engineer.
