Sonu Sood- The real-life hero

 

The recent hashtags trending on Twitter or the shouting anchors on TV shows that the prime problem of the whole country might be the mystery of Sushant Singh Rajput and his manager, Disha Salien’s death. Government may not have the exact data about unemployment or migrants’ deaths during the lockdown, but it’s perfectly fine because now Indians are busy discussing the Mumbai Indians team at IPL than Kangana Ranaut’s tweets.

However, a celebrity who has replied Kangana’s outrageous tweets without stooping to her level and given a voice to the migrants’ issue is undoubted, Sonu Sood. And I felt it right to write about Sonu Sood at this point because positive actions need to be proliferated more than the negative words, particularly in today’s era of social media. Also, Sonu and I studied in the same engineering college in Nagpur. Of course, he was senior to me, but both of us still like the taste of the chana-poha prepared at Shankar Nagar square, Nagpur.

Cut to the year 2002...

‘He is Sonu Sood’ called out some of the college students, pointing at a tall guy in jeans with a girl beside him, at the fee counter.

It was the pre-social media era when there used to be many OMS (Outside Maharashtra Students) studying in my engineering college in Nagpur.

Being Filmy, I knew that he is the same guy whose Shaheed E Azam was going to release then. However, there were three movies based on the life of martyr Bhagat Singh, in one, Bobby Deol was playing Bhagat Singh, another had Ajay Devgan and then one had Sonu Sood as Bhagat Singh. Although the film Shaheed E Azam was good, it was forgotten as Ajay Devgan’s Bhagat Singh did fair business. Although I didn’t watch any of them in the theatre, I always felt that Sonu Sood would have got his due if it was the only movie on the life of Bhagat Singh that time.

Nevertheless, the lockdown imposed by the Indian government during the pandemic has given Sonu what he was due for. Ever since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the actor has lent a helping hand to thousands of migrants and daily wage workers through his acts of kindness. 

He had been helping migrants reach their houses safely. A work that was expected from a billionaire or philanthropist was started by an actor who is not as super-rich as King Khan or the Patriotic Kumar. But as Sonu mentions on his Twitter handle, you need to have that passion than money, to help others.

 तू कुछ करने का पहले मन तो बना .. भलाई का रास्ता अपने आप दिख जाएगा।

Be it feeding the hungry, transporting migrants back home, enabling students reach their motherland and equipping frontline workers, Sonu did it all in the lockdown.

The engineer-turned actor and producer from Moga, Punjab came to Mumbai with eyes full of dreams and heart full of desires. He started off by acting in supportive roles in regional films and went on to make it big in Bollywood by portraying several negative characters effortlessly. Although we saw him in many movies like Ashique Banaya Aapne, Ramaiyya Vastavaiyya and so on, his character-Chhedi Singh in Salman Khan’s Dabanng won our hearts. But now, from a reel-life anti-hero, Sonu is winning our hearts again not in films but reality. He has become a real-life messiah, a superhero for migrants.

What started with blue collars, now being expanded by Sonu and his team to white collars, empowering people through employment. His team has already employed around 20,000 people till date. And what’s more patriotic than to provide jobs when the pandemic has caused a huge job-loss. We need more passionate Doers like Sonu than mere orators.

Wishing Sonu and his team all the best!