Blame it on the silly season. The heat is melting my brain, and the only way to stay sane is to order a frothy cappuccino with a buttery Prashant to go with it. What’s a Prashant? If you don’t know, you are missing out. Ever heard of a croissant with a name? That name is Prashant. It all started with a viral video of a young man mispronouncing croissant, setting social media ablaze with memes and reels.
The first time ‘Croissant Prashant’ popped up on my screen, I was wondering what all the excitement was about. A young man receiving an AI tutoring lesson and innocently mishearing a word did not seem like a big deal. After all, apart from the snooty French, very few people in the world pronounce croissant correctly. The scene unfolds like this: AI briskly asks, “What is this called?” as an image of croissant appears on the screen. The young man confidently responds, “Pateesss” (pattice). AI corrects him: “Croissant”. He hears “Prashant” and repeats it. And that’s it!
Bakers across India jumped on the trend, labelling trays of freshly baked croissants as Prashant, which began flying off the counters. With Prashant turning into a national obsession, savvy marketing teams wasted no time hopping on to the bandwagon. Britannia led the charge, followed by Netflix India, Lenskart, Swiggy and Myntra. The Prashant phenomenon was now official.
Here’s a sheepish admission: my day begins with a ‘Prashant’ ordered from a neighbourhood bakery. While I enjoy my breakfast treat, I scroll for the latest reel engagingly put together by the OG—a young digital creator called Ayush Hu Mai. There he is—goofy, accessible, relatable, dressed in his by now trademark maroon hoodie, looking dishevelled and confused as he makes some more mistakes trying to improve on his English vocabulary. There is something totally disarming and adorable about his persona, as he unselfconsciously makes one mistake after another, wrongly identifying everyday objects and disingenuously mispronouncing most of them.
He is one of us. An ambitious desi youth trying to up his game and be seen as ‘cool’. Why not? Don’t we find countless similar folks at coffee shops as they navigate the maddening, often aggravating accents attached to foreign food items that have become a part of our Indian menus, thanks to the proliferation of global fast-food chains inundating the landscape.
“I make people laugh,” declares Ayush, now that he has been converted into a bonafide influencer’ (56.3k Insta followers), with an agency handling his content. Endorsements are pouring in, for Ayush, who, in a vanity post, says he is six feet tall—expect more tall claims to follow as he navigates the fickle world of viral stardom.
As a social phenomenon, I find ‘Croissant Prashant’ entirely fascinating and would love to meet him before he becomes history after creating a bit of it himself. What sort of a future awaits Ayush, once India’s appetite gets satiated with Prashants, with or without toppings and fillings? How long can the joke carry on before the audience yawns? I watched his new reel which involves “hidden words’’ (lots of hidden double entendres). Prashant’s gullibility and innocence shine as he refuses to utter the word ‘boobs’ and piously says “books”. Yes, I laughed. A bit too clever. A bit too obvious.
Ayush’s life extension on social media will need much more than jejune humour to keep the fans coming back for more.
But as short-lived crazes go, Prashant’s impact has been made strongly and effectively—that too, at a throwaway price. Britannia and others are laughing all the way to the bank. Hope Ayush is doing the same. What next? A bagel named Bomanji?
X@DeShobhaa Instagram@shobhaade