Contraband Thrills Of The 2000s, Starring Emraan Hashmi

The 2000s was a strange decade. Situated between the TV-driven ’90s and the networked economy of the 2010s, it enjoyed both the bliss of analogue slowness and the thrills of digital adventures. It was both and neither—and strangely, this in-betweenness is what is missed the most by people growing up during these years. Amidst the mediatic shifts taking place at the time, there was a young hero named Emraan Hashmi gaining a peculiar sort of fan-following in Hindi cinema. He debuted in the film industry with the film Footpath (2003). But it was Murder (2004), produced by Vishesh Films and directed by Anurag Basu, that gave him his first taste of popularity. 

Since the inception of the Central Board of Film Censors in 1951 (later renamed as the Central Board of film Certification), mainstream Hindi cinema has taken many detours to portray kissing between its lead pairs. Sometimes innovative, sometimes funny, these alternate narrative techniques have dominated much of Hindi cinema’s song-and-dance cultures. Mostly, however, it would be portrayed by two flowers coming together and occupying the screen to cover for the couple getting intimate. There were films that broke these codes once in a while and faced the ire of the censor board as well (from a deleted kissing scene in Umrao Jaan, to Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia’s kiss in Bobby, or that of Aamir Khan and Karisma Kapoor in Raja Hindustani, to name a few) but the norm was mostly bhavnaaon ko samjho (make  do with the thought of it). Murder not just broke away from this norm, it detailed and lingered on its explicit lovemaking scenes—provoking both intrigue and apprehension in an audience that was till now relying on the comfort of reading between the flowers.

At the heart of this breakup with Hindi cinema’s moral codes was Hashmi—dubbed as the ‘serial kisser’ of Bollywood ever since the release of the film, who has, in interviews over the years, both relished and ranted about not being able to shed this tag. What would go on to become a sort of signature of Vishesh Films (also referred to as the Bhatt camp) over the next few years, would be films with sensual themes, paired with exquisite music. Comfortably nestled in a blurry space between B-grade and mainstream aesthetics, a lot of these films were anchored by Hashmi. 

Apart from being known as the star who was not afraid to kiss on screen (as opposed to the big stars like Salman Khan, who were very clear about not crossing that line),  Hashmi  came to be associated with good music. Whether or not the films were watched, or even liked, Hashmi’s sensual scenes were seen, and the songs were heard, liked and shared amongst youngsters. This was before YouTube became popular or accessible. So, television music video channels were the most common mode of watching and listening to these songs. Something else was simultaneously taking place in the contemporary mediascape. It was the rise of VCD and music downloading. The internet bandwidth in the early days of downloading did not allow entire films to be downloaded. But songs could be downloaded and for free. Hashmi’s songs were a rage on these music downloading websites, with young listeners downloading and sharing them with friends, mostly via Bluetooth and USB sticks. His popularity was also lapped up by the informal CD markets, where CDs comprising curated mixes of popular songs, as well as pirated copies of films, were sold or rented out for very cheap.

So, Hashmi’s stardom wasn’t the kind where fans queued up in front of cinema halls for the first-day-first-show or hooted on his entry. In fact, a lot of the people interested in him were middle and high-school teenagers who were actually not allowed to watch most of the films he starred in. These pirated CDs, along with stolen glimpses of his songs on music channels, was what composed a major part of his popularity. One cannot be sure if the term ‘fandom’ really captures the kind of popularity that Hashmi had garnered among teenagers. It was not the kind of admiration where they would hang his posters on their walls. It would be either through an engagement with the music typically associated with him, or through clandestine viewings of his films, where the thrill was perhaps often bigger than the star.

One look at the comments section of a Hashmi song on YouTube, and one would often come across people who were in their teenage during these years, reminiscing about the rush of secretly catching glimpses of his songs and films. Watching pornography, especially amongst teenagers, is something that has mostly been confined to the male networks of sharing and watching. These videos, circulating in the mainstream, while not explicit enough to be considered as porn, were erotic enough, and in a way that intrigued youngsters across the spectrums of gender. That they were breaking away from the family dramas of Bollywood and speaking a language of cosmopolitanism, while being accompanied by absolute earworms, added to the intrigue.

Over the years, Hashmi has appeared in an eclectic list of films with varied themes. These include The Dirty Picture (2011), Shanghai (2012), Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai (2010), Ek Thi Daayan (2013) and Ghanchakkar (2013), among others. All of them were quite different from his Vishesh filmography and his roles in these, quite distinct from each other. In the last decade, he has acted in cricketer Mohammad Azharuddin’s biopic Azhar (2016), played a villain in Tiger 3 (2023) and appeared as a manipulative husband in Haq (2025). But nothing seems to write off the contraband thrill of his 2000s popularity.

His online fan pages, a lot of whom refer to themselves as Emraanians, are nostalgic archives of his songs and videos (and often, by extension, of singer KK, who remains Hashmi’s most iconic collaboration) from the 2000s and early 2010s. Hashmi’s work and career remain like a sharp edge sticking out of the usual rhyme and reason of Bollywood stardom. For this, perhaps, he continues to enjoy a cult following amongst people who remember being introduced to him through pirated music and cinema. The strange phenomenon of his popularity was captured quite succinctly by Aryan Khan in his series B***ads of Bollywood (2025), where the only thing that Parvaiz (Raghav Juyal) can think of every time he sees Hashmi, is Tamalli Maak, the Egyptian refrain from the popular song Kaho Na Kaho from Murder.

The entanglement of Hashmi’s career with people discovering the delights of contraband sharing and digital repeatability, perhaps remains the biggest aspect his popularity. So, no matter how many films he ends up acting in, for a certain generation that was too young to watch his early films in the theatres but old enough to access pirated copies, every time one sees him, the mind indeed goes Tamalli Maak.