The power of Twitter and how much it has penetrated the regional languages too was on show in a snowballing thread on a fictional character named Contractor Nesamani from the movie world enjoying global supremacy, at least for a while, on the micro blogging platform. It became a game everyone seemed to want to get into as the sheer humour of it fuelled interest.
#Pray_For_ Nesamani may have seemed a regular hashtag about someone who was ill. But the manner in which it was bucking the trend to go viral meant another puzzling hashtag had taken the social media world by storm. Well, Contractor Nesamani is a character out of the Friends (2001) film starring the old favourite among comedians Vadivelu. He is a building contractor who somehow manages with quirky assistants, one of whom drops a hammer on him.
A teaser poster of a hammer —curiously from Pakistan — kicked off a series of responses building into a swell in which everyone, including active politicians joined. The parody grew organically, making fun of everyone including famous political leaders like the late J.Jayalalithaa and the health bulletins that used to come out about her condition from the corporate hospital. Those like the former legislator CR Saraswati who had sworn Jaya would recover soon and come out of hospital were also mocked at.
The memes really stole the show. Considering most of the early exchanges were in Tamil and this is Chennai, Harbhajan Turbanator (or someone on his behalf as he is away in England watching the cricket World Cup) got into it with a Tamil tweet. Could the city's favourite cricketing son Mahendra Singh Dhoni then be far behind? He was soon brought in through a meme to retrieve the situation for the ailing ‘Contractor’ since he is so well known for pulling his CSK team out of dire situations. The CSK tweet set the ball rolling along further.
The twitter storm snowballed into a major social parody recalling many situations familiar to the state as it journeyed through most recent times in which Jaya worshippers had even tonsured their heads to pray for her recovery. Dragging the PM into it was a moment’s work considering he was also featured in so many ‘Go Back Modi ‘campaigns during the poll. It may have been cheeky on the part of the DMK spokesperson to get in and tease the PM, but as it was all in good humour it’s doubtful if any sections of the IT Act would apply to the Twitterati who would then be marches off to jail.
The iconic comedian Vadivelu may be just recovering from a hiatus in films caused by his energetic foray into political humour that came a cropper for various reasons. Himself unaware of how a character he had played had gone viral like this around the world, Vadivelu said he was pleasantly surprised by it when speaking to a Tamil TV channel. The comedian has been an eternal figure of fun and he was being ribbed here. Any media mention is a good advertisement in these days of social media domination and the comedian may be further energised into reprising more of his comic sequences, some of which figured in the stream of memes surrounding the building myth of Contractor Nesamani.
The memes have become so popular that some Tamil internet users have changed their prefix to ‘Contractor’ just like the PM’s ‘chowkidar’ campaign was popular as a social media handle.
