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“To be really honest, all the plans that I had went out of the window after first 12 hours, because till that point I was thinking ‘Oh, it will be cool and fun to just do it’, but time slowed down immensely,” he said talking about his experience.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated his birthday on September 17, one YouTuber marked the occasion by chanting the PM’s name non-stop for 24 hours and live-streaming it.As wishes poured in for the PM from around the world on his 70th birthday, Anmol Bakaya began chanting ‘Modi ji’ on his channel in the morning, triggering a huge buzz online.
“In the past year I’ve heard a lot of things, both positive & negative, about our Honorable Prime Minister, but personally i just have immense respect for him and for all that he has done for our nation, my support for him is never ending and this is just a little gesture of appreciation and nothing more,” Bakaya wrote in the description of the video.
He also had a tracker to keep count of the number of times he said the PM’s name.
Sitting against a backdrop of quotes and posters, he requested people coming to the video to “please stay for minimum a minute as your watch time helps to promote this video and reach Shri Narendra Modi ji”.
“I wanted to do something really special for our PM on his birthday, which had never been done before. The idea just struck organically, when I was hanging out with my friends,” the YouTube vlogger, whose channel’s theme is entertainment-based lifestyle videos, said.
“I thought it was really cool idea but it turned out to be super challenging too,” he said, as the dedicated Modi fan claimed to have chanted his name for over 1.03 lakh times.
He was exhausted and almost collapsed several times but kept going as people flooded his YouTube video’s comment section. Viewers saw him leaning against the wall for support in the end as he took longer breaths and sighs to go on.
“Honesty, all the plans that I had went out of the window after the first 12 hours. Till that point I was thinking ‘Oh, it will be cool and fun to do it’, but it looked like time had slowed down,” Bakaya said.
“The last 12 hours seemed like an eternity. At that moment, if you have seen the stream, you could see me looking up. I was praying to God to help me.”
Saying that “quitting was not an option”, the 24-year-old Gurgaon resident added: “I believe if you take up a challenge, then you have to do it. You owe it to yourself, so that part of my ego was completely involved, and God probably helped me”.
“I thought if my video reaches Modi ji, it will put a smile on his face. However, thinking about it in retrospect, I think it was so naïve. Why would the PM waste his time over that,” he added.
The reactions to his video were varied on social media. Some poked fun at him, there were others who were impressed and some lashed out at him. “I got so much hate, which I found amusing because I couldn’t fathom why people were reacting so. We were not saying anything negative,” he said.
“It was surreal, that’s all I can say at the end of it. I really didn’t expect it to become so big and I feel truly humbled. I was really an interesting experience,” he concluded.
Although the video doesn’t seem to have reached the PM yet, Bakaya said the experience has pushed his subscribers’ base — from 2,000 to 8,000 and counting.