Narendra Modi turned 76 on Thursday, and the film industry's birthday messages started landing online within hours. Anupam Kher's was among the longer ones, a detailed note that went back to where it all began for him and the Prime Minister, an early meeting in Ahmedabad that the actor says stuck with him.

Kher posted it on Instagram, opening with the line, "Heartfelt birthday wishes to the Honourable and most beloved Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi Ji!" He prayed for a long, healthy life for Modi and then got into what he admires about him: honesty, discipline, hard work, integrity. Standard birthday-note territory, except Kher leaned into the personal bit.

"My first meeting with you in Ahmedabad was extremely inspiring for me," he wrote, before calling Modi "a rare and selfless leader for whom the motherland is always paramount." He signed off hoping the Prime Minister keeps leading "with the same energy, steady resolve, and dedication," then closed with a straightforward "Jai Hind!"

There's no date attached to that Ahmedabad meeting in Kher's post, so it's not clear when it happened relative to his decades in front of the camera or his stint heading the Central Board of Film Certification and later the Film and Television Institute of India. The note treats it as formative regardless.

Kher wasn't alone. Akshay Kumar and Jackie Shroff also put out birthday wishes for the Prime Minister on Thursday, part of a wider round of greetings from Bollywood names that showed up through the morning. Neither actor's message has been detailed beyond the fact that it happened, so what exactly they said isn't on record here.

None of this is new territory for Kher. He's been vocal and consistent in his public support for Modi over the years, and this post fits that pattern rather than breaking from it. What makes it worth flagging today is simply the volume, an actor known for his politics writing at length on a birthday that a chunk of the internet was already going to be talking about anyway, for reasons that have nothing to do with cinema.

Whether more names from the industry add their voices through the day remains to be seen. Thursday's far from over, and birthday posts for a sitting Prime Minister tend to keep trickling in well past the morning news cycle.