Mumbai: At Pali Hill, outside Reshma Apartments, a group chants, “Aakha Bollywood ek taraf, Emraan Hashmi ek taraf” — All of Bollywood on one side, Emraan Hashmi on the other. Unbothered by the smirks of guards and passersby, they keep their eyes locked on the sixth floor, hoping for a fleeting glimpse of their stargod whose time has come again. Finally.
Among them is Deepak Gohil, who travelled from Nala Sopara with his three-month-old daughter to what he fondly calls his “temple”.
Emraan Hashmi fan clubs have been operating in the shadows for years. They didn’t have the social media flex like Shah Rukh Khan or Rajinikanth fan clubs. Their star was in near-hibernation too for a whole decade even though his enduring appeal remained etched in their minds. Now, after Bads of Bollywood, Haq, Ground Zero, They Call Him OG, Tiger 3, and Taskaree, the world knows what the fan clubs always did. He is like no other.
“Emmi Jaan (as he fondly calls the actor) has taught me to love, balance work and personal life, and how to be a good father. I want my daughter to grow up as an Emraan Hashmi fan. I’ll be a proud father,” Gohil told ThePrint.
He has been a fan since Footpath (2003). His devotion to Hashmi runs so deep that he observes the Chamunda Devi fast every Tuesday for the actor’s success.
“Until one of Emmi Jaan’s films becomes a hit like Murder, I will continue doing this. These days, I don’t miss a single Tuesday because Awarapan 2 is set to release this year,” said Gohil.
He did bold films yet no actress has ever said he made them uncomfortable. No actor or director has ever spoken ill of him. No affairs. No fights. It proves he is a good human being and that is why we love him
-Srushti, who runs an Emraan Hashmi fan club
Emranians, what Emraan Hashmi’s diehard fans proudly call themselves, are a tribe scattered from Jammu to Kerala, and even Dubai. For years, they lived double lives. Online, they hid behind anonymous or fake accounts. Offline, they rarely admitted their loyalty. In those dark times, being a Hashmi fan wasn’t exactly dinner-table conversation. Loving him was a secret hobby, and his films were a guilty pleasure.
For the longest time, the fandom survived under the weight of judgment. Hashmi came with the mocking tag of a “serial kisser” due to his early-2000s filmography. Yet, the songs, the intense gazes, even the frequent puckering up became associated with strong emotion for many.
“His audience is emotionally invested in him, he becomes part of the song, the mood,” said film writer Puja Talwar. She drew a parallel with the devout fans of Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, and Shah Rukh Khan. Except, they were superstars in a league of their own.
“Emraan Hashmi may not fall into that category. Yet, he has managed to retain the mystique of a star,” she said. “Once a film or series ends, he disappears. You don’t see him everywhere, you don’t hear from him constantly. He isn’t perpetually photographed by paparazzi, nor does he chronicle his daily life.”
Songs are central to the Hashmi appeal. He is indelibly associated with the evergreen romantic hits of the 2000s, from Bheege Honth Tere to Aashiq Banaya Aapne.
“Whether someone is riding in an autorickshaw, driving a Fiat, a Mercedes, or a Jaguar, chances are there’s an Emraan Hashmi song playing on their playlist,” added Talwar.
While Hashmi’s career had gained momentum again in the past couple of years, the Bads of Bollywood was a turning point. And with it came a cultural mic drop moment. Aryan Khan’s show didn’t just reference Hashmi, it validated his underground cult.
Raghav Juyal’s character breaking into Tamally Ma’ak at the mere sight of the actor felt like a collective confession. Every Hashmi fan saw themselves on screen. The internet lost its mind, and suddenly Emranians were done whispering. They stepped out of the shadows, claiming their place under the sun.
But Srushti, a freelance digital marketer who runs an Instagram fan club with over 3 lakh followers, has never been afraid to voice her love. She has watched every Hashmi film at least 50 times on loop. Watching them was part of her post-school schedule. When a Class 10 batchmate teased her for carrying Hashmi’s photo in her pencil box, she reacted with primal fury.
“This classmate of mine looked at his picture and said, ‘Eww, you like him?’ And as an instant reaction, I slapped her,” she said, burying her face in her palms, cheeks red with embarrassment. Although Srushti was suspended for a week, no one ever mocked Hashmi in front of her again.
“We Emraan Hashmi fans are very sensitive about him. We take things personally. No one wants to mess with us,” she added.
Also Read: Anime’s desi soul is in small-town India. Nagpur is its capital
New validation
At 12.30 pm on September 18, Srushti’s phone began buzzing nonstop. Her Emranian fan group, with thousands of members, was having a hallelujah moment. Emraan Hashmi’s cameo in The Bads of Bollywood had fans in a fever.
“Just like the internet, our group completely melted down. The cameo went more viral than the show itself,” she said.
But the WhatsApp group, named ‘Emraan Hashmi Fans Group’, which has an intense image of the actor as its DP, doesn’t come alive only during the release of his films. Members constantly dissect Hashmi’s fan edits, interviews, and appearances.
Reacting to one clip shared in the group, a fan wrote, “Bhai used to wear a silver chain, not able to see that lately.”
Another quickly chimed in: “Yes, you are right. He used to wear a silver chain.”
Members also share videos of themselves enacting Hashmi’s dialogues, AI-generated film posters, festival wishes, and more.
The fandom says Aryan Khan’s Netflix series paid a long-overdue tribute to Hashmi and unintentionally ended up giving a voice to his silent fans. For middle-class males from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, openly admiring Hashmi was never a taboo given that his characters often reflected their realities and aspirations. However, in Tier 1 cities, the confidence to publicly own their admiration emerged only after the release of the show.
For women across cities, too, the series gave them the social validation to finally express a fandom they had long kept private. Srushti claimed that her fan page on Instagram gained at least 600-700 women followers after the series aired.
People, especially women, feared that if they admitted their admiration, others would assume they were like his on-screen characters or label them as having a ‘loose’ character
-Rahul Gupta, superfan
Superfan Rahul Gupta, an aspiring filmmaker who moved from Kanpur to Mumbai, said that after the series dropped, he discovered many of his female friends back home had been closet Hashmi fans all along.
“People, especially women, feared that if they admitted their admiration, others would assume they were like his on-screen characters or label them as having a ‘loose’ character,” he said.
Gupta, however, has one lingering regret. He wishes The Bads of Bollywood had been a film rather than a series.
“We wanted to watch it in a theatre and scream at the top of our lungs,” he said. “But that cameo was iconic, something that will be remembered for decades.”
Small-town inspiration
The abbreviation ‘KKC’ is part of Rahul Gupta’s personality. It’s framed and displayed on a wall in his Andheri home and also features on his Instagram handle, RahulKKC. Not everyone, however, knows what it stands for. In Jannat 2, Hashmi played Sonu Dilli KKC — kutti kamini cheez.
Growing up in Kanpur, Gupta said Hashmi characters such as Shivam Pandit (Awarapan), Arjun Dixit (Jannat), and Sonu Dilli (Jannat 2) spoke directly to him, as they did to other boys in smaller cities and towns.
“Every guy has got their heart broken because they didn’t have enough money or didn’t come from a respectable family background. For them, Shivam Pandit’s story was their own,” said Gupta, who moved to Mumbai in 2017 to become a filmmaker, mostly working on short films since then.
Coming from a small town to the glamorous world of showbiz, Gupta credits Hashmi’s dialogues with propelling him to get out of his comfort zone.
“In Jannat, there’s a line, ‘Pair phelane ke baad chaddar ka size dekhna chahiaye’ (First stretch your legs, then check the size of the blanket). And in Rush, bhai says, ‘Jo aadmi risk nahi leta, uski life risky ho jaati hai’ (A man who doesn’t take risks ends up living a risky life). I came to Mumbai because those dialogues stayed with me and made me dream big,” he said.
It is because of Bhai that intimacy has been normalised in films and web series today. He made it acceptable at his own cost. The first person to go against the tide always pays the price. Had it not been for Bhai, filmmakers would have struggled to portray intimacy on the big screen
-Sameer Qureshi, fan
The Hashmi effect also gave Gupta confidence to pursue romance with bravado despite his insecurities about his thin frame and crooked teeth. To propose to the woman he’d had a crush on for years, he belted out Jannat’s title track in the middle of the road, just as Hashmi had done in the film for Sonal Chauhan’s Zoya.
Gupta’s crush said yes.
Celebrity matchmaker
Gohil isn’t alone. Hashmi is the reason why two of his fans are happily married today. When Mahi accepted Raghib’s friend request on Instagram, it was because of his DP with Emraan Hashmi. A DM turned into conversations, fandom became friendship, and friendship became love.
At one of Hashmi’s meet-and-greets, Raghib requested the actor to make a video for Mahi, and he happily obliged. A year later, the duo got married. Last year, when Hashmi was doing promotions for Haq, Raghib and Mahi met him again, this time as husband and wife.
“Bhai (Emraan Hashmi) was in awe. He laughed a lot when we narrated this story. The best part is that he remembers his fans. You meet him 4-5 times, he will remember you,” said Raghib.
For fans, access to Hashmi usually comes through film promotions, special screenings, and birthday gatherings outside his Pali Hill apartment.
Gohil says that whenever Hashmi spots him, the actor instantly says, “10 crore wala aa gaya.” This is because Gohil once performed a dialogue from Mumbai Saga (2021) during a birthday event: “Sawaal yeh nahi ki Amartya marega, sawaal yeh hai ki 10 crore ka main karunga kya” (The question isn’t whether Amartya will die. The question is what I’ll do with Rs 10 crore).
“He is humble. He never lets us feel small,” said Gohil. “Itni izzat duniya se nahi milti jitni Emmi Jaan dete hain”—No one gives us as much respect as Emmi Jaan.
The kiss debate
Emraan Hashmi has long tried to shed the label of Bollywood’s “serial kisser,” yet it continues to follow him. Over the past few years, he has chosen scripts far removed from his early Casanova persona, including in Selfiee, Haq, and his latest release Taskaree. Still, those smooches from the 2000s keep being brought up.
At a press conference on January 7 at Yash Raj Studios for Taskaree, a customs enforcement thriller, fans once again asked whether they would see him romance on screen the way he once did. Hashmi blushed.
But fans bristle when questions around on-screen intimacy come laced with judgment or teasing. They insist that those roles changed Hindi cinema for the better.
“It is because of Bhai that intimacy has been normalised in films and web series today. He made it acceptable at his own cost. The first person to go against the tide always pays the price. Had it not been for Bhai, filmmakers would have struggled to portray intimacy on the big screen,” said Sameer Qureshi, who has been a Hashmi fan for 23 years now.
As he explained Hashmi’s contributions on this front, other fans around him at Bandra Bandstand nodded in agreement, smiling as if someone had finally articulated what they had always felt.
Qureshi joked that his own wife once scolded him for watching Hashmi’s films, worried he might turn into a “serial kisser”, but today some of the most acclaimed series—Sacred Games, Mirzapur, Aashram—don’t shy away from depicting sexuality.
“People mock him for doing ‘adult films.’ But do teenagers who don’t watch Hashmi’s films avoid English movies, many of which are equally adult? This is sheer hypocrisy. The issue has been dragged far too long,” he said indignantly.
However, other fans lament that the fixation on kissing scenes has ended up overshadowing the actor’s strongest performances.
“We cannot forget films like Shanghai (2012) and Why Cheat India? (2019). They are among his most underrated performances, hardly anyone talks about them,” said Mumbai-based fan Avith Shetty. “He has played characters and said certain dialogues which absolutely no one could have pulled off.”
Overcome by emotion, he paused as waves crashed in the background. Then he added: “And what about Awarapan? Not a single intimate scene. It flopped at the box office and later became a cult classic, so much so that a sequel is now in the works.”
‘A good human being’
For Emraan Hashmi fans, he is far more than just an actor. They place him on the pedestal of a teacher, a mentor. His films may have drawn them to him, but they continue to stand by him for the person he is off screen. Many talk about him as if he were part of their family.
“I like him as an actor, but I love him as a human being,” said Srushti.
The group then collectively listed the personal qualities that make him different from others in the industry — his honesty in admitting that he joined films to pursue a luxurious life, his unwavering commitment to his family, and how he put his career on hold to focus on his son Ayaan’s cancer treatment.
“Over two decades in the industry and not a single controversy. Tell me one actor who has achieved this,” Srushti said. A unanimous “yes” followed.
“He did bold films yet no actress has ever said he made them uncomfortable. No actor or director has ever spoken ill of him. No affairs. No fights. It proves he is a good human being and that is why we love him,” she added.
Also Read: Netflix India has turned 10. This is how it changed stardom and Indian viewing
Fan army on a mission
The recent shift has changed the gender break-up of the Emraan Hashmi fan following too.
“Earlier, 70-80 per cent of the fans were men. Now it’s a solid 50-50. Women are expressing their love for him far more openly,” Srushti said, adding that being an Emraan Hashmi fan had often invited judgmental glances. Relatives even teased her father about her admiration for Hashmi.
“Thankfully, my dad himself is a Hashmi fan,” she laughed.
Dedicated fan groups do more than track Hashmi’s movements or obsess over his appearances. They mobilise. When the first poster of Tiger 3 was released, Emranians were upset. Srushti scrolled through old group chats, pulling up messages filled with anger over how Hashmi had been pushed to the corner while Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif dominated the frame.
What followed were long discussions, planning, and a short wait for perfect timing. Then, in unison, the fandom flooded X with thousands of tweets tagging Yash Raj Films. Within two days, the production house released a new Tiger 3 poster, this time placing Hashmi at the centre.
Fans have even had a hand in an entire film getting made. Last year, as older films were being re-released in theatres, Emranians flooded social media with appeals for the return of Awarapan’s Shivam Pandit. This year, that wish is turning into reality with the upcoming Awarapan 2.
This time, fans are excited, but also nervous. They are personally invested in the success of Awarapan 2, which is due for an April 2026 release.
“We just want to make Awarapan 2 the biggest hit of his career. And we will make it happen. He has given us so much; it’s time we give him what he truly deserves,” Srushti said. “If I have to watch it 100 times, I will.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)