By Ayesha Khan 
New Delhi, March 4: Let’s be honest. Most viral videos these days are forgotten by the time you finish your morning chai. You watch, you smile, you scroll. That’s it.
This one is different.
A video has been doing the rounds since last week, and if anything, it is picking up speed rather than fading out. Two small children from Uzbekistan got on a stage, put on their costumes, and performed “Dil Laga Liya” from the old Preity Zinta film Dil Hai Tumhaara. The girl wore a bright pink lehenga with a dupatta. The boy had a kurta, a jacket, and a turban. There was a big red heart on the backdrop. And then they just went for it.
By this morning, the video posted on Instagram by @abdullajanovagulnoz had crossed 23 million views. Over 3.6 million likes. Both ABP Live and Zee News have it running as a top trend today, and the comment sections have not calmed down since the weekend.
So What Is Everyone Actually Reacting To
Because it is worth asking. Dance covers happen every single day. Children perform on stages all over the world. What made this one travel the way it has?
Watch the video once, and you will understand. It is not just that the steps are correct. It is that the girl has somehow figured out exactly how Preity Zinta used to look at the camera. That particular brightness in the eyes. That famous dimpled smile arrives at precisely the right moment in the song. The boy is no different. He is not just going through the motions. He is actually playing the character.
People who grew up watching this film in theatres in 2002 are losing their minds a little. The comment that keeps getting quoted everywhere says the kids are “more original than the original.” That line has taken on a life of its own at this point.
What is really driving the shares is not just admiration. It is something more personal than that. People are sending this video to their mothers, their older siblings, the friend from college who used to have this song as their ringtone. That kind of sharing, the kind where you think of a specific person who needs to see this, is what separates a genuinely special moment from regular trending content.
Here Is The Part That Most Indians Do Not Know
The fact that children in Uzbekistan know and love Bollywood does not surprise people who have spent time there. But for most Indians sitting in Delhi or Mumbai or Chennai scrolling through this video, the natural reaction is something like, how on earth do kids in Central Asia know this song well enough to perform it on a stage?
The answer goes back further than most people would guess.
In the 1950s, India and the Soviet Union had an unusually warm relationship. Prime Minister Nehru and the Soviet leadership got along. Trade happened. Cultural exchange happened. And at some point, Bollywood films started getting screened in Soviet theatres, dubbed into Russian, which was the common language across the entire union at the time.
Here is the thing about that period. American films were not being shown in the Soviet Union because of Cold War tensions. So for audiences in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and the other republics, Indian cinema was not one option among many. It was often the only window into a world of colour and romance and big feelings that state-approved Soviet entertainment was not exactly known for providing.
Raj Kapoor. Dilip Kumar. Nargis. Dev Anand. These were not just names people recognised. These were genuine stars, the way Shah Rukh Khan is a star in India today. People packed cinema halls to watch them. Children grew up with their songs. Grandmothers still hum them.
The Soviet Union broke up in 1991. Decades passed. New governments, new priorities, and new entertainment options came in from everywhere. And yet, when Tashkent put up a statue of Raj Kapoor in December 2024, people came out to cheer. A writer from Uzbekistan named Shohrux Usmonov mentioned recently that his mother named him after Shah Rukh Khan. Not as a joke. As a completely normal thing that happened in his family.
You Would Not Believe What You Find There
People who have travelled through Uzbekistan come back with stories that feel almost too good to be true until you hear them from enough different people.
Walk into an ordinary shop in Tashkent, and you might find posters of current Bollywood actors on the walls. Not vintage Raj Kapoor posters kept as antiques. Current actors. Local television channels there run Indian films regularly. Indian soap operas play in the mornings, dubbed into local languages. And reportedly, there is a Hindi radio station in the country, which is the detail that tends to make Indians go completely silent for a moment when they hear it.
Former External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj found all of this out the direct way. She was visiting Tashkent on an official trip when an elderly Uzbek woman spotted her on the street and, without any introduction, just started singing a song from a classic Bollywood film. The Ministry of External Affairs shared the clip itself, writing that Raj Kapoor and Nargis are household names in Uzbekistan. This was not a carefully arranged cultural moment. It was just a Tuesday afternoon in the city.
These Kids Were Not Even Born When This Song Released
This is the thing that keeps nagging at you once you notice it.
“Dil Laga Liya” came out in 2002. The children performing it are nowhere close to being old enough to have been alive then. This song did not reach them through their own memories. Somebody in their home, or their neighbourhood, or their dance school, carried it forward and handed it to them. They took it, practised it hard enough to perform it publicly in full costume, and got up on a stage and delivered it with more feeling than most people manage when they are performing songs they actually grew up with.
According to Free Press Journal, which covered this story today, the performance was part of a larger talent show where Uzbek children recreated multiple Bollywood numbers. The range was almost absurd. They went from a Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala song from the 1950s all the way to recent numbers featuring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt. That is not one teacher with a favourite film. That is a whole community that has been keeping this alive across generations and updating it in real time.
What This Actually Means For India
India talks about soft power a lot in foreign policy circles. The idea that a country’s culture can build goodwill and influence in ways that trade deals and diplomatic visits cannot always manage. Bollywood is always mentioned in these conversations, but usually in the context of the Indian diaspora in Britain, America or the Gulf. The depth of what exists in Central Asia, and specifically in Uzbekistan, gets very little attention by comparison.
It probably should get more.
The two countries have been inching closer formally as well. Uzbekistan has invited Indian filmmakers to come and shoot there, pointing to the historical architecture of Samarkand and Tashkent as backdrops. Film co-production agreements have been signed. The Tashkent International Film Festival has screened Indian films. A Uzbek film director speaking at the International Film Festival of India in Goa said something worth quoting directly. He said that Raj Kapoor, Hema Malini, and Shah Rukh Khan are “a super-emotional part of our lives.”
A government can sign agreements. It cannot manufacture that kind of feeling. That has to grow on its own over a very long time.
Nobody From Bollywood Has Said Anything Yet
As of this morning, Preity Zinta has not posted about it. Jimmy Sheirgill has not responded. Neither have any of the other stars mentioned been connected with the wider talent show footage. That may change as the day goes on and the video keeps climbing.
If any of them do respond, it will be a warm moment. But the video does not actually need their response to be what it already is. The children performed the song. Twenty-three million people watched. Millions more have it sitting in their WhatsApp forwards waiting to be opened.
Somewhere in Tashkent, two kids in costume who have probably never set foot in India gave a performance that made an entire country feel recognised and loved from a distance. That is not a small thing.
Bollywood has always had this quality, this ability to travel far beyond the borders of the country that made it and take root in places nobody planned for it to go. Uzbekistan is perhaps the clearest example of that anywhere in the world. And every few years, something happens that reminds India of what it has in that relationship, a statue going up in Tashkent, an old woman singing on a street, or two small children who learned a song they were not born for and performed it like they had been waiting their whole lives to do so.
This week, it was the children.
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- Ayesha Khanhttps://hindustanherald.in/authors/ayesha/
- Ayesha Khanhttps://hindustanherald.in/authors/ayesha/
- Ayesha Khanhttps://hindustanherald.in/authors/ayesha/
- Ayesha Khanhttps://hindustanherald.in/authors/ayesha/
Rajiv Menon