The Times of India (Chennai) ·
Politics
Modi’s Jhargram jhalmuri moment goes full circle as stall owner celebrates PM’s birthday
JHARGRAM: A roadside jhalmuri stall in Jhargram shot into the national spotlight after Prime Minister Narendra Modi stopped there during his assembly election campaign in April and sampled the popular Bengali snack, with photographs and videos of the encounter quickly going viral on social media.
On Thursday, the stall's owner turned the moment into a personal birthday tribute for the Prime Minister, news agency PTI reported.
Vikram Kumar Sahu, who runs the Chavan Lal Special Jhalmuri stall near Raj College More, celebrated Modi's birthday at his shop by putting up photographs of their brief encounter, sharing the memory on social media and serving customers larger-than-usual portions of jhalmuri.
"The Prime Minister came to my shop and had jhalmuri. That moment is unforgettable for me. I wanted to celebrate his birthday here and remember that moment again," Sahu said, wishing Modi good health and a long life.
The encounter lasted only a few minutes.
PM Modi, travelling between election programmes in Jhargram, stopped at the roadside stall, spoke to Sahu and sampled the snack before leaving.
Photographs and videos of the visit, including footage shared from the Prime Minister's social media handles, soon travelled far beyond Jhargram, PTI reported.
For Sahu, however, the sudden fame came with an unexpected problem as his modest stall became a destination for people wanting to recreate the Modi moment.
Calls poured in, visitors arrived to make reels, and the vendor found himself repeatedly recounting the few minutes that had changed the fortunes and visibility of his shop.
Contemporaneous reports said the video crossed 100 million views on Instagram within a day, while searches for "jhalmuri" also surged sharply.
For several weeks, jhalmuri became an unlikely visual motif of the BJP's Bengal campaign, with the Modi stop spawning reels, short videos and social media posts around the snack.
Jhalmuri also began appearing as a popular offering at BJP programmes, giving the mixture of puffed rice, spices, onions and chillies a new presence during the campaign season.
The April campaign was followed by a major electoral change in Bengal, with the BJP winning 207 of the 293 seats for which results were declared, while the Trinamool Congress won 80. The results were declared in May.
Jhalmuri, of course, had no ballot paper.
But in the weeks around the election, it became one of the campaign's most recognisable and widely replayed flavours, PTI reported.
Five months later, the same jhalmuri stall has once again been associated with the Modi moment.
On the Prime Minister's birthday, Sahu did not organise an elaborate event.
Instead, he returned to the memory that had made his shop famous, served customers jhalmuri and shared photographs once again.
From a roadside cone of puffed rice to millions of views, the journey of Sahu's jhalmuri has been an unlikely one.
For the vendor behind it, however, the most important part of the story remains those few minutes when a Prime Minister stopped at his little shop.
(With agency inputs)
