Some moments are so unexpected, so magical, they stop you in your tracks. For actor Jaideep Ahlawat, one such moment arrived not with huge grandeur, but with a simple sentence tucked into a Reddit thread—with Sachin Tendulkar answering fan questions about cricket, life, and everything in between.
Sachin Tendulkar doesn’t hand out compliments lightly. So when the cricket legend praised actor Jaideep Ahlawat during a Reddit AMA on August 25, it was a moment for Jaideep Ahlawat.
Responding to a fan who asked him about Ahlawat, Tendulkar wrote: “He is a fantastic actor and I love his work. Hathiram in Paatal Lok was amazing.” Just a single sentence, but enough to send the internet—and the actor—into a spin.
Ahlawat, known for his ardent and stranded work on the screen, specifically as Inspector Hathiram Chaudhary in Paatal Lok, couldn’t believe it. He took the screenshot of Tendulkar’s response on Instagram stories with the caption: “Sir… Aise mat karo. Koi khushi se pagal bhi ho sakta hai. Thank you so much, sir. Will cherish this all my life.” He followed it with another story, posting the same screenshot again, this time writing: “Kahin main sapna to nahi dekh raha. Thank you, sir,” tagging director Avinash Arun, writer Sudip Sharma, and Prime Video.
While the compliment made headlines, Ahlawat has been making waves in his own right. He recently won Best Actor – Web Series at the 2025 Indian Film Festival of Melbourne for Paatal Lok Season 2. A video from the festival, showing him breaking into an impromptu bhangra during the Remitly IFFM Dance Competition, has gone viral. Sharing the stage with Malaika Arora and Mukesh Chhabra, it was Ahlawat’s spontaneous moves that had the audience chanting, “Once more!”
