The most useless Indian

Hi! I'm Brazilian! Would you tell me who Bharat Bandh is and what he did?" I was amused to see this tweet. Just as I got over this to realise the innocence that followed, my friend Tinu Cherian gave the Brazilian a quick explanation. "He is the most useless Indian, but loved by our political parties," Tinu tweeted.

Bharat Bandh being on the top 10 trends on Twitter is a feat which is a first for any Indian topic. For the uninitiated, Twitter trends are an outcome of tweet scans posted by millions throughout the day. Words being talked about most are classified as trends. There have been many instances when Indian topics have been trending. But they have always been people as against an event and never topping the trend list.u00a0

"Sachin is God," on the cricketer hitting a double century was trending for quite some time. World-wide topics such as World Cup and Wimbledon were perpetual trending topics this season. The bandh had actually proved to be more popular than even God Bless America, which coincided with the US Independence Day on July 4, and Last Airbender, the latest film of Indian-origin Hollywood director Manoj Night Shyamalan.

According to trendsmap, a software that maps trends geographically, the majority of the tweets on the shutdown were from Mumbai, followed by Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai. From reports on the status of the strike in their area to sharing jokes, and giving views on this method of protest, Twitter was buzzing.

"(L K) Advani, (Nitin) Gadkari, Lalu (Prasad), Mulayam (Singh Yadav), Prakash Karat should join Twitter because Bharat Bandh is getting more success on Twitter," someone tweeted. I agree. They would have been happier with the the success of their objective of drawing public attention.

Maybe they too would have tweeted, "I am courting arrest at Jantar Mantar or Andheri station." Or, might actually deploy their men on to the streets after reading tweets like, "Bharat Bandh. Reached office in a record time of 25 minutes. Didn't see any blockades en route. Unusual."

L K Advani's statement, "Even we do not claim prices will come down due to Bharat Bandh. The solution lies with the government. Unfortunately, there is no indication the government has a solution." This could well have been a tweet.

A postmortem of the word 'bandh' was also done. "Originally, a Hindi word meaning closed, bandh is a form of protest used by political activists in India and Nepal. During a bandh, a party or a community declares a general strike," someone tweeted. So, while tweeting was big at 12 tweets per minute, no tweeple were not ready to observe a bandh.