LAHORE: Waking up at six in the morning, 18-year-old Salim Masih begins his day with a daily grueling drill at a local vegetable market. He lifts sacks of tomatoes and potatoes on his shoulders to stack them into the transporting vehicles. He makes Rs600 to -800 a day tops as his wage.
He then, in the evening, at about the same time, visits his gym, again for a drill, but one he passionately chooses to do: for parkour and b-boying (breakdancing). He’d started off his dash into the athletic world with Taekwondo martial arts but soon realized he could be so swift and feathery for other arts, too.
Owing to his athletic artistry and charismatic dance moves, Masih has mustered an audience of up to hundreds of thousands that follows him on TikTok and gets inspired by him.
He said things have really changed for him after his decision to make videos of what he does.
His decision did him two favors: win him the followers and constantly made him get better and sharper at his skill.
There’s a huge fanbase of athletes and I could tap into it only after making my tiktoks – a newly carved out term for short videos made originally on TikTok but can be posted across social media.
Some people want to join me to learn my moves because they like how they seem when performed, and how they translate into praise by those looking at them, said Masih.
But most of them lose their hearts when they realize what kind of exhausting hard work this requires. Masih has a hard time making his ends meet, provided his poverty-stricken background, but due to the newly carved out social media space for short videos, he has now been able to create ripples across the circles that matter.
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He met ARY News right at the end of his run with an international b-boying competition where he’d gotten through to the second round before his course culminated. He’s sad for not making it to the finals but also just as encouraged to try again with better practice and more moves to his repertoire.
