He loves Indian weather, the food, the culture- and gives a high five to street hawkers who flock to him saying ‘habibi!’ Khalid Al Ameri, popular for his family friendly content where he travels to different countries for exploration and puts videos of it on his social media, is in Mumbai for the first time.
Teaming up with HT City on the first day, he is dressed in the traditional kandura, interesting onlookers as we take a stroll at the sea side in front of Shah Rukh Khan’s mansion Mannat. He gets chatting with us after a couple of clicks, “The energy of this country warms me up every time. As a creator, I feed off energy… there are so many beautiful stories to tell.”
Ameri’s journey in the last couple of years has taken him to Kerala, Chennai, Amritsar, Assam and Old Delhi. “Earlier I would only be here for the big days like festivals, this time I decided to just do it for myself and not limited to a specific day I went to Old Delhi as a part of my Ramadan series, and it’s one of the craziest places I have been to. Whenever I travel to India, there is always a big connection I see between UAE and Indian population. People don’t realise how close the tie is between UAE and India,” gushes the YouTuber.
In fact, he bumped into a fan in his Mumbai hotel’s elevator- who lives in Dubai!
‘I LOVE SPICY INDIAN FOOD’
As we are strolling on the streets, Ameri’s face lights up as soon as he sees street food stalls. “One item I have ticked off my bucket list- seeing SRK’s house, it’s iconic, I had only seen videos of it on social media. The next item on the list is eating an authentic Mumbai vada pav. I did a video on vada pav in Dubai once, and people flooded the comments section saying ‘if you want to have vada pav, go to Mumbai, else don’t talk’ The street food here is on another level. In south India, they son’t have much of a street food culture. I am very excited to try out pav bhaji, street side Maggi, bhelpuri, sev puri… I love pani puri. I celebrated an important day recently with the Indian embassy in UAE. Embassies usually don’t have a lot of street food, but here, after the formalities, they had an entire section in the back for pani puri. My record is 20,” laughs the 40-year-old.
‘WANTED TO MAKE VIDEOS WHICH FAMILIES CAN WATCH’
Ameri, with a following of around three million on YouTube and the same on Instagram, clearly has cracked the formula to get the views and numbers on his content. But he realises that the audience’ attention span has gone down. “That’s how the algorithm works. Which is why I too would put out a lot of shorts. But then I realised that I need to tell my stories in the time they deserve. I had done a short video on the influence the Indian community had on UAE, and Mr Amitabh Bachchan had tweeted it. I still have that screenshot,” he beams.
He continues, “A lady stopped me in Dubai once, she said ‘Khaled, my entire family watches your video’ Something clicked in my head- imagine how amazing it is that it can be a grandmother in her 80s and a granddaughter who is seven, and both can watch my video and enjoy. That’s the content I want to make. I am inspired by family friendly creators, like Rowan Atkinson, Mr Bean, who worked past the boundaries of content and language.”
