Kolkata, Sep 17 (PTI) 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 photos and videos of the encounter quickly going viral on social media.
On Thursday, its owner turned that fleeting moment into a personal birthday tribute for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Vikram Kumar Sahu, who runs the Chavan Lal Special Jhalmuri stall near Raj College More, celebrated the Prime Minister’s birthday at his shop, putting up photographs of their brief encounter, sharing the memory on social media and serving customers larger-than-usual portions of the puffed-rice snack on the occasion.
“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 told reporters and customers, wishing Modi good health and a long life.
The encounter lasted only a few minutes. Modi, travelling between election programmes in Jhargram, stopped at the roadside stall, spoke to Sahu and sampled the snack before leaving. The photographs and videos of the visit, including footage shared from the Prime Minister’s social media handles, soon travelled far beyond Jhargram.
For Sahu, however, the sudden fame came with a rather unexpected problem: 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 same few minutes that had changed the fortunes — and visibility — of his little shop. Contemporaneous reports said the video crossed 100 million views on Instagram within a day, while searches for “jhalmuri” also surged sharply.
And then there was the election itself. For several weeks, jhalmuri became an unlikely visual motif of 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 humble mixture of puffed rice, spices, onions and chillies a new life as a campaign-season snack.
The timing gave the episode an unusual political afterlife. The April campaign was followed by a dramatic 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, ending the TMC’s 15-year stint in power in the state.
Jhalmuri, of course, had no ballot paper. But in the weeks around the election, it became one of the campaign’s most recognisable — and most replayed — flavours.
Now, five months later, the same jhalmuri stall has been repeating the Modi moments.
On the PM’s birthday, Sahu did not organise an elaborate event. He returned to the memory that had made his shop famous, served his 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 as improbable as it has been distinctly Bengali. And for the vendor behind it, the most important part of the story remains those few minutes when the Prime Minister stopped by his little shop. PTI PNT NN
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