Chetan Bhagat’s interaction with bookseller goes viral

Candid camera or sales gimmick, netizens wonder

Chetan Bhagat had some gratifying moments when he approached a hawker selling his books, who unaware of his identity, praised his works.

The 46-year-old best-selling author shared a video of the interaction, during which he criticises his own books, and the hawker defends them. The Twitter post has gone viral. “People tell me this book is useless,” says Bhagat to the hawker in the video. To this, the hawker innocently replies saying “No, sir it’s very good, it sells a lot.” Bhagat continues to criticise the books, and the hawker, not realising that he’s talking to the author himself, persistently defends both the writer and his books. Finally, Bhagat reveals his identity and the two go on to take some selfies. The video was captioned “Met this guy today who refused to agree that Chetan Bhagat is not good! I Heart suit him and admire his hard work and marketing! I am who I am because of these guys!” It has received almost 2 lakh views on Twitter and invoked mixed reactions from Netizens.

While some users called it “customer intelligence at its best!”, others criticised the author for praising his own work and misrepresenting the vendor’s intention. “Self-praise is last thing one should do, hope it is not stage managed,” read one tweet, while “You should have checked his answer on a different book you don’t like. He was selling and not admiring” said another. Some users also advised the author of One Arranged Murder to not endorse such vendors as they sell pirated copies.