Doppelganger Zone: Govinda’s double meets and stuns actor

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When Govinda arrived at Mumbai’s international airport with wife Sunita Ahuja on the way to Bagdogra to inaugurate a Football League, he had a “stunning” experience.

The actor was taken by surprise when he met his doppelganger there. The man approached Govinda, offered him a bouquet, touched his feet and engaged him in a lengthy chat. Govinda warmly welcomed him and was smiling all along as they kept chatting.

The whole exercise seemed planned as the paparazzi were present and the actor actually had time to chat with the lookalike, whose name, conveninently, has not even been revealed!

Star doppelgangers are commonplace and it is said that every human being has six lookalikes around the world! Harking back to cinema, in the 1974 success, Five Rifles, filmmaker-comedian  I.S. Johar, a legend in his time, actually cast unknown faces whom he also named after the stars they resembled—Shahi (Shashi) Kapoor and Rakesh (Rajesh) Khanna as its two heroes.

Encouraged by its success, he next made the social drama Nasbandi in 1978 with both his heroes and three more clones—Kanoj (Manoj) Kumar, Sev (Dev) Anand and Anitav (Amitabh) Bachchan.

With the media being what it is today, such lookalikes, whether by their own design or default, have been better ‘exposed’, and we are not talking at all about the traditional ‘duplicates’ or ‘doubles’. This was a collective term for actors and actresses that took the place of stars in—usually—action sequences in long shots, thanks to similar heights, figures, hairstyles and a broad resemblance in looks.

The best known doppelgangers were Sona, an actress who tried to make the grade as heroine and looked like Madhubala, and Kishore Bhanushali, who looked, walked and talked like Dev Anand, and is best known for his work in Dil, the 1990 blockbuster. Sona resembled the Mughal-E-Azam heroine so much that she played that actress’ role in the biopic, Meena Kumari Ki Amar Kahani, made by Sohrab Modi, no less. Modi was a legendary actor-filmmaker, best known for films like Hamlet, Sikandar and Pukar.

Dhananjay Singh is a lookalike of Dharmendra and has acted in some films like Sanyasi Mera Naam and in a song sequence in Om Shanti Om. A not-too-famous person is Anil Kapoor’s lookalike, Navin Rathod, who is an usher in Mumbai’s Gaiety cinema since decades and has even done a few films as his duplicate.

One of such films was the 1991 Ramgarh Ke Sholay, a film that itself spoofed Hindi cinema’s biggest hit, Sholay, complete with Amjad Khan himself reprising Gabbar Singh’s role. Besides Navin, Vijay Saxena, a clone of Amitabh Bachchan, and Kishore Bhanushali, were in the cast. The film managed to do breakeven business!

Of late, US-based fitness expert John Effer was shocked when his resemblance to Anil was pointed out, and stated that he could not believe how two people in different parts of the world could look so similar. But unlike some Hindi film plots, there is no act of nature or evil human beings here—the principal elements known to separate twins at birth!

When Salman Khan introduced Sneha Ullal in Lucky—No Time For Love, the actress, who had a faint resemblance to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, was said to have been tapped by the actor because of her looks that reminded him of his lost love! A closer look-alike to Aishwarya, however, is Pakistan-based beauty blogger Aamna Imran.

And here are some more doppelgangers of famous celebs discovered in recent times, and by no means is this a comprehensive list!

Priyanka Chopra Jonas: Navpreet Banga, Canada-based fitness blogger

Anushka Sharma: Ramsha Khan, Pakistan social media celebrity

Jacqueline Fernandez: Amanda Cerny, US-based social media sensation

Alia Bhatt: Celeste Bairagey, social media star and TV actress

Deepika Padukone: Rijuta Ghosh Deb, digital creator

Yammi Gautam: Vidisha Shrivastav, TV actress

Sayani Gupta: Asha Negi, TV actress

Hrithik Roshan: Gautam Singh Vig, TV actor and Bigg Boss contestant

Akshay Kumar: Majid Mir, a Kashmiri who is a cricket fan

Tiger Shroff: David Saharia, a model from Assam