A young man hails an auto rickshaw on a blistering Indian afternoon when the streets are deserted and the stores shuttered for a mid-day break. As he steps into the vehicle, he gets pulled out by another youngster and side-kicked in the chin. You can hear the screams of elation of an invisible crowd.
The scene is repeated again and again. And again. Every time a twentysomething is yanked out of a three-wheeler and assailed. Twice with a Chokeslam, a manoeuvre often used The Undertaker, and twice with Stone Cold Steve Austin’s jaw-breaking Stunner. Each time the invisible crowd responds with frenzied shrieks of delight.
The YouTube video has been watched nearly 90,000 times since it was uploaded by ANGAARTv in March last year. And this is one of the lesser-viewed videos on the channel. Many of its other professional wrestling-inspired creations have 3 lakh views and one 8.5 lakh views.
“We never expected it to be this popular,” said Rohit Vishwakarma, the editor of the videos. “If we had got 100 views, it would have been enough.”
ANGAARTv was created in early 2015 by a group of neighbourhood friends in Bhayandar who just wanted to build a YouTube channel. It began with a series of spoofs of ‘90s Indian TV shows like Shaktimaan and prank videos, but the response was lukewarm.
Around the same time, Suraj Jha saw YouTube videos of Joe Weller in which the Englishman performed wrestling manoeuvres to actual commentary from World Wrestling Entertainment matches.
“I felt like they were really easy to do,” said Jha, “so I called Rohit and we shot the first one in one day, right here in this courtyard.”
That video, with children playing wrestlers to the track of actual WWE commentary, captured everyone’s imagination. Soon the 12 friends behind ANGAARTv were using props, including a wrestling ring, putting on makeup, and improving their productions.
“I come from a family of wrestling enthusiasts,” said Jha, a 21-year-old hotel management graduate who works at Westin Hotels. “My mother is a wrestling freak. She follows all the matches and knows more about the wrestlers and their storylines than I do.”
ANGAARTv now has close to 45,000 subscribers and its videos, shot in alleyways and terraces, have been viewed over seven million times. Jha plays Vince McMahon (the CEO of WWE) in the short productions, and the society’s residents fill in as the audience.
In one video a desi version of The Undertaker’s biker persona enters the arena on a bicycle. In another, a local Rey Mysterio performs moonsaults from the top rope. Mattresses covered with blue tarpaulin are used as the ring, old pieces of cardboard serve as tables, and several other D-I-Y improvements add to the spectacle.
Filmed using two or more mobile phones, ANGAARTv’s shoots normally last four to five hours. The youngsters shoot without a script – the only thing that is planned in fact is the kind of match and the wrestler each of them will play.
“We don’t put videos just for money or views,” said Jha. “We want them to have good content, and that’s why it takes a month to make each one.”
Once the initial decisions are made, the youngsters spend a week or two practising each stunt to make sure it is safe. “We care a lot about safety, that’s why we haven’t let anyone else become a part of the group,” Jha said. “We keep getting mails from people who want to join us but we have to refuse. Who has the time to train them? And we don’t want to take that responsibility.”
How did they know what props to use or how to build the ring? “We did it by ourselves – that is the Indian way,” Vishwakarma said, and Jha added, “We spent our own money, didn’t take anything from our parents and sat up till 3am making the ring.”
But it is not always a picnic – things do go wrong.
Shiva Singh, who plays the Great Khali in the videos, remembered, “When we first started using the ring set up, we tried to slide into the ring like the actual WWE wrestlers, but our shoes would get stuck or something would go wrong, so we had to give up that idea.”
The visibly unsafe thing they still practise is bursting tube-lights on one another’s heads to imitate WWE’s hard-core Attitude Era from the 1990s. The smashing is done slowly with an exaggerated sound effect, but there is no visual trickery involved. Is the hurt real? All of them look around sheepishly and then Jha answers. “It does. But we have to do it.”
Asked about permissions, they all begin laughing, before Jha speaks up. “Lots. In the beginning we had more problems, because people thought these kids are just wasting time. As we gain more followers and popularity, the residents are saying that it is a good thing. We had a chairman, who got so tired of us that he left the building. But our parents have never had a problem, they are often standing in the audience.”
Singh added, “Now people in the area don’t refer to us by name, they call us ANGAARTv.”
Inspired by their success, several other people in their neighbourhood have started their own YouTube channels. “Apart from that, we have received a lot of feedback from comments and e-mails,” said Jha. “The videos have gone viral on many pages. There was a group from Mexico that provided their own commentary for our Money in the Bank video in a podcast.”
Jha complains that many of the comments they receive from people abroad refer to them as “these boys from a Mumbai slum” or a “poverty version of WWE”. “They think all of India is a slum,” said Jha. “The greatest feeling was when the guy who inspired us, Joe Weller, liked one of our videos.”
Over the next few months, the youngsters want to add storylines and have “wrestlers trash talk and cut promos. We also have a few ideas for spoofs." Do they get money from YouTube? “I don’t want to disclose the figure but we do. Enough to have fun. In the future, our plan is to go on a trip to Goa with some of the money and make a Buried Alive match on the beach.”
Have they thought of giving up their jobs and studies and making a living through ANGAARTv alone? “It can happen,” said Jha, and Singh added, “What our hope is that one of us gets a call from the WWE. If even one of us gets to go, it will be a big deal for all of us.”
