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TRUE ROMANCE
Celebrity worship can seem entirely random—but to these fans from the four corners of the earth, devotion seems practically preordained. |
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LOVER
KANIKA ARVIND
BANGALORE, INDIA
BELOVED
SHAH RUKH KHAN
MOVIE STAR
“I wouldn’t say it’s love or infatuation or obsession,” says Kanika Arvind. “I am in complete awe of him; he is the epitome of perfection.” The perfect man, according to Arvind, a 25-year-old student of hotel management in Bangalore, is Bollywood film star Shah Rukh Khan. When he’s onscreen, Arvind says, “I howl, I shriek, I sob… I squeeze my husband’s arm, clasp him, scratch him.” Arvind has followed Khan since his first roles (in soap operas); she plots for weeks in order to be at the opening of his every new film. |
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LOVER
JOSÉ MALDONADO
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, USA
BELOVED
MORRISSEY
SINGER/SONGWRITER
By day he’s a lifeguard in Los Angeles; at night José Maldonado pulls on cuffed jeans and sweeps his hair into that signature pompadour and takes the stage with four other devout fans to “pay tribute to the greatest singer and songwriter who ever lived.” That is to say, Morrissey, the singer who rose to fame fronting the British band the Smiths in the ’80s and who now performs solo. “I’d never heard anyone sing like that before,” says Maldonado. “It changed my life forever.” He adds, “It takes a certain kind of person to identify with Morrissey—mostly, it’s about being 16, clumsy, and shy.” |
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LOVER
TANIA VUCHKOVA
SOFIA, BULGARIA
BELOVED
GENERAL BOIKO BORISOV
SECRETARY GENERAL, BULGARIAN MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR
“There is some sort of beautiful madness about him,” Tania Vuchkova, a 66-year-old retired actress, says of General Boiko Borisov, the Secretary General of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior, who has become perhaps the most popular public figure in the country (he even stars in a comic strip). “He’s like a hurricane,” says Vuchkova, although, she adds, “he was created to rescue and protect.” Formerly a bodyguard to Communist leader Todor Zhivkov, Borisov has made his name in the new government as a tireless prosecutor of the criminal organizations trying to establish power in post-Communist Bulgaria. “He’s the personification of that primary masculine force that makes you feel safe,” Vuchkova says. |
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PHOTO BY G. BOGDANOV & B. MISSIRKOV
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LOVER
YANNICK HARRISON
HORNBÆK,DENMARK
BELOVED
MICHAEL JACKSON
SINGER
Since the age of two, Danish singer Yannick Harrison, aka Jay-Kid, has been singing and dancing just like his hero Michael Jackson. Last year, the most tangible evidence of his devotion—the release of his Jackson tribute CD, Bringing You the Magic—brought Jay-Kid literally face to face with the superstar. Jackson, when he heard the CD, asked Jay-Kid to perform at his birthday party in California, and offered to fly him in. (This was before Jackson’s most recent, much-publicized legal problems.) “When MJ turned to the crowd and said, ‘Didn’t you think that last |
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performance was good?’ I felt like I’d climbed Mt. Everest and reached the top,” Jay-Kid says. “I didn’t even ask for an autograph—the memory was good enough for me.” Back home in Denmark, Jay-Kid, now 14, lives with his parents and two younger brothers in a sleepy resort town north of Copenhagen. He is now composing his own music for his upcoming Motown Records release, and is scheduled to perform in front of an audience of 150,000 at the Eurokoncert in Budapest. Michael Jackson led the way, but it’s all Jay-Kid from here. |
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