Why Chacha, the Chaat Vendor from Baghpat UP has Gone Viral

Why Chacha, the Chaat Vendor from Baghpat UP has Gone Viral
Why Chacha, the Chaat Vendor from Baghpat UP has Gone Viral

Social media somehow manages to find a new incident to transform a previously unknown person into a household name in India and perhaps even some part of the world, that too overnight.

In this series of viral incidents, the new addition happens to be a ‘Chacha’ (Hindi word for uncle) who has now has become the new star of Indian social media.

With his cutout now getting the Bernie Sanders treatment, morphed on anything and everything, his face being photoshopped on faces of who’s who of the social media world.

The ‘Chacha’ is a chaat seller named Harinder from Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh, one of the combatants in an epic street fight the video of which went viral this week.

According to the police, the fight occurred between two groups of Chaat vendors in the Baraut area of Baghpat. Later, eight men were arrested in the case.

Harendra, who claims to have a 40-year-old shop, stood out among the eight men arrested after the fight.

Now nicknamed “chacha”, he told news agency ANI that he had suffered because of his rivals over the past few days.

“They kept drawing my customers away…they kept telling them to come to our shop, his food is last night’s. The customers would return my chaat,” Harendra complained.

A fight that has gone viral and Chacha seems to have a very active role in it

In the viral video, a group of men took on each other with sticks and rods as passersby watched in disbelieve.

The footage, which many said looked like ‘straight out of a 90s film’, caught the fancy of the entire country, but it was Harinder who grabbed all the attention because of his unique hairstyle.

As the visuals from the fight went viral, netizens were comparing his hairdo with Einstein or and admired his fighting skills in the video – and wondered if he is inspired by a WWE fighter.

The relentless fighting by Harinder also got a lot of admiration from the netizens. Some also questioned whether it was appropriate to make jokes about the misery of a poor man.

Nevertheless, #chacha was trending at no. 1 in twitter India, which itself is testimony to the virality of the video capturing the fight.

The unusual fight at a popular market in town went on for more than 20 minutes before it broke up. The video, recorded probably by a bystander, soon surfaced on social media and went viral.

A dozen individuals were injured, the Baghpat police said in a statement after making arrests.


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