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Who is Contractor Neasamani and why is the world praying for him?

The power of Tamil Twitter was once again on full display as a hashtag began trending in Chennai on Wednesday afternoon. The hashtag #Pray_for_Neasamani requested people on social media to pray for someone called Neasamani and quickly gathered traction. By Wednesday night, it was among the top trends in the world.

Who is Neasamani, the rest of India asked.

For the uninitiated, Neasamani is nothing short of an icon in Tamil popular culture. Contractor Neasamani is a character played by comedian Vadivelu in the Tamil film Friends in 2001. This film, a remake of a Malayalam film by the same name, had Vijay, Suriya, Devayani and others in the star cast.

How did it all start?

#Pray_for_Neasamani trended after a Pakistan-based meme page Civil Engineering Learners posed a question, “What is the name of the tool in your country?” by posting a photo of a hammer.

An overenthusiastic Vadivelu fan was quick to connect the hammer with a scene from Friends, in which Contractor Neasamani ends up with an injury because one of his inept assistants (Ramesh Kanna) drops a hammer on his head after failing to follow the simplest of instructions. The humour in the scene is accentuated by the poker-faced expressions of Vijay and Suriya, who play second fiddle to Vadivelu.

After the user connected the hammer to Neasamani, another Tamil Facebook user, mockingly wrote, “Is he ok?” Now these two decided to rib the entire Facebook culture of praying for someone with #Pray_for_Neasamani which later snowballed into a major Twitter trend with memes and funny responses.

Soon the hashtag began to gather traction on Twitter and many more Tamil users participated in the fun. The trend really took off when celebrities and official handles of organisations also decided to pay their tribute to the unforgettable Neasamani.