What’s in a name? You might ask. 

I was forced to ask due to an ongoing trending story on social media.

Poor Shakespeare would turn in his grave when he comes to know, how his world famous quote from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ has been appropriated today by an Indian named ‘Binod’.

For those who don’t know their Shakespeare, in his ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Juliet famously says, “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But Shakespeare had to write many masterpieces of English literature for his dialogues to become so famous as to be recalled by millions of his fans, sometimes out of context.

But this Indian named ‘Binod’ became famous, or rather, atleast his name became famous, so much so that the Who’s who of the world started quoting the name to stress various messages, which they would like to put across to the people.

What did this Binod do? It’s just a comment, did I say? Well, yes and no. A user called Binod Tharu has been doing nothing on YouTube. Yes, he has done nothing. 

Nothing except adding his first name Binod, in the comments section of huge number of YouTube videos uploaded on any and every subject under the Social media Sun. 

This was enough to troll him (an international sport?) with Binod memes and the rest as they say, is history. These Binod memes became so famous that national and international brands jumped on the bandwagon.

Swiggy celebrated their birthday with the tweet, ‘We think Binod will be the first person to call and wish us at 12 tonight’.

Airtel India exhorted it’s users to ‘Receive every call with Haan Binod bol’, asking them to comment and tag them with the reactions.

Amazon Prime video IN joined in the fun by using a still from the movie ‘Kuch kuch hota hai’ and saying, ‘Hi, I am Binod, naam toh suna hi hoga’.

But as usual the Mumbai Police twitter handle rocked with their own comment, ‘Dear Binod, we hope your name is not your online password. It’s pretty viral, change it now.” This was for their Online safety campaign.

Sometimes one doesn’t need to do something earth shattering to become famous nowadays, especially on the social media space, a humble well placed comment or comments are enough.

Yatindra Tawde