Several young Indian American men gathered at Dolores Park in San Francisco, California, last weekend to see who among them looked closest to Dev Patel. Twenty-five-year-old Jaipreet Hundal of San Jose came closest to being the actor’s doppelgänger. He won a $50 check, a “Monkey Man” statue, and a bouquet.
The young Indian American beat 20 other hopefuls who had channeled Patel’s signature looks from “Slumdog Millionaire” to his recent directorial debut “Monkey Man.” Contestants sang, danced, and paraded themselves in front of a massive crowd.
In a speech following his win, Hundal gave a “shoutout to all the Dev Patel look-alikes.” He said he “studied” about Patel a bit, to get himself “into the zone.” When asked by one of the female attendees if he was single, Hundal waved a photo of his girlfriend in his wallet. “I am taken,” he said.
The ‘Dev Patel Look-alike’ contest was organized by two friends — Sitara Bellam, 26, and Tasnim Khandakar, 27. Bellam told NBC News that she was “genuinely blown away by the crowd and the interest in the event.” She and her friend Khandkar “made this event on a whim as a joke for our group of friends in San Francisco,” she said, adding that she “put a single flier up in Berkeley.” She admitted being “really excited” to be able to “celebrate brown / South Asian men.” The idea was born after a recent Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in New York City, Bellam said. “Someone was like, ‘Well, we have the demographic for a Dev Patel one!’”
But unlike Chalamet who surprised his fans in New York, Patel didn’t show up.
