Sanam The Digital Superstars

With their unbeatable social media numbers and onstage sass, there’s no stopping India’s biggest music sensation

- Nirmika Singh

It’s rare to find a non-mainstream Bollywood artist speaking of fans and fandoms as matter-of-factly as Sanam do. When was the last time you saw an indie rock band even use the word ‘fan’ in a social media post or on stage, unless they were laughing at the lack thereof? If you’re a band from the scene, chances are you’d stay away from anything that smacks of self-aggrandizement lest it cost you your coolness quotient. But Sanam, arguably India’s most popular band right now and legit digital superstars, have every right to narrate fan stories. Just because they’ve had so many!

The most bizarre one has to be from a New Year’s Eve gig a few years ago. Bassist Venkat Subramaniyam recounts, “A guy randomly walks up on stage and feeds me a grape! It was crazy.” Another time, a girl in the audience who was standing at the edge of the stage held on to guitarist Samar Puri’s shoelaces and wouldn’t leave them. Frontman Sanam Puri has been the awkward recipient of 34 roses handed to him one by one all through the night by a smitten fan at a private gig. But the band say it’s their manager Ben Kurian Thomas who is probably the most severely hit of them all: in a bid to ‘save’ the boys, Thomas is often always left with scratches and nail marks courtesy fangirls. Drummer Keshav Dhanraj recounts how a girl used to cut herself and write letters in blood addressed to the band, and even post it on her Instagram. He says, “The good part about this was that all our fan groups got together, contacted this girl and helped her. We have some really amazing fans!”

How it all happened