With nearly 6M views on Dubsmash, this 23-year-old in a wheelchair is breaking the internet
Chandni Nair suffers from a condition called myopathy that confines her to a wheelchair. A pharmacy student, she is also fond of acting and singing that has made her posts on Dubsmash and TikTok viral.
In 2015-2016, Chandni Nair decided to try her hand at Dubsmash, which was becoming extremely popular and on a lark, posted some videos of her lip-syncing dialogues from Malayalam and Tamil movies.
She compiled the videos and sent them to Variety Media, a Facebook page, which posted them, and she subsequently garnered a terrific response.
“My videos were shot in such a way that no one knew I was doing them from a wheelchair. I didn’t want anyone to sympathise with me and give me views. I wanted people to recognise me for my talent,” Chandni tells HerStory.
Creatively different
Chandni suffers from myopathy and was diagnosed when she was a year old. A disease of the muscles, the condition makes the muscle fibres not function properly resulting in muscular weakness.
What is most distinctive and admirable is the way Chandni views her condition. Throughout the conversation, the 23-year-old talks of her “limitations” rather than her disability.
After securing a rank in her BPharm course, Chandni is currently pursuing her final year of DPharm at Oxford College of Pharmacy in Bengaluru, and is looking forward to a fulfilling career in a hospital.
Her Dubsmash and TikTok vidoes are another extension of her personality, one that showcases her creative side, and her fondness for acting.
But it’s not been an easy ride so far. Life has been an uphill task ever since the diagnosis but through it all, Chandni’s cheerfulness and enthusiasm stand out.
Born in Kerala and raised in Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu, schooling was a difficult period for her.
“I had to study in a small school near my home because I couldn’t get admission into others because of my ‘limitations’. I was the only student in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, following which I had to shift to another school that kindly shifted the classes to the ground floor for me,” she recalls.
Facing many challenges
Many faces - Chandni Nair
Despite these hurdles, she viewed life through different lenses – taking classes in music from the age of six, and taking part in competitions in school and in her colony.
When she was 15, Chandni had to undergo a difficult surgery for scoliosis, a condition that causes the spine to curve to one side because her appearance had changed considerably. She says she looked “deformed and shrunk” and needed the surgery immediately.
She soon bounced back and that’s when her affair with the online world began.
Chandni has so far done around 200 videos on TikTok but her forte is long Dubsmash videos. Her video of her imitating a conversation between a doctor and a patient in Mathematics lingo in Malayalam garnered 3.2 million views in just three days. Currently, it’s at 5.8 million and counting.
Where does she find the time for all this in her busy academic schedule?
“I make the time for it because it’s my passion. I complete all my assignments and do them at night on my phone. My parents are my biggest strength and support and they are cool with everything I do. They are all big critics of mine. They make me reshoot every video until they think it’s perfect enough to be uploaded,” she says with a laugh.
Chandni believes being a girl in this country is tough in itself, but being a girl on a wheelchair is very challenging. “I wanted to be a doctor but couldn’t join medicine because of many reasons. A lot of people tried to discourage me from pursuing my goal. I hope with my Pharmacy degree, I am able to help patients to lead better lives,” she says.
She is also keen to pursue a career in acting. “I have been receiving offers for short films, music albums, and acting. It’s a work-in-progress. I hope I can play many emotions soon,” the internet sensation quips.
For this 23-year-old, limits are only those that, rightly, exist in the mind.
Edited by Evelyn Ratnakumar
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