Zohran Mamdani Forgets The Songs But Remembers The Shah Rukh Move
India-West News Desk
NEW YORK, NY – Zohran Mamdani grew up around filmmaking through his mother, director Mira Nair, and is known to have even spent some time on her sets. So, when a Bollywood quiz came his way, viewers expected him to sail through it. What he delivered instead was a moment of pure crowd-pleasing instinct: the perfect Shah Rukh Khan arms-wide-open pose, hit with the same confidence he had shown during his campaign events.
That moment arrived during his appearance on ‘Mehdi Unfiltered,’ where the New York City Mayor-elect was put through a Bollywood song-guessing challenge. He opened strong, instantly identifying ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ from the Shah Rukh Khan and Manisha Koirala starrer ‘Dil Se’. But the rest of the quiz quickly became less forgiving.
Mamdani stumbled on some of the most recognizable tracks of the 2000s, missing ‘It’s the Time to Disco’ from ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’ and ‘Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna’ from ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’. The DDLJ miss set up the most memorable exchange of the segment. While he couldn’t recall the song title, he instinctively broke into Shah Rukh Khan’s signature pose, explaining that he could picture SRK descending the steps as the music played.
He correctly linked the track to ‘DDLJ’, even if the name escaped him. Host Hasan ribbed him for trying to buy time while avoiding admitting he didn’t know the answer.
In his campaign, Mamdani leaned into Bollywood energy, closing his victory night soundtrack with ‘Dhoom Machale’ from the 2004 film ‘Dhoom’.
