Written by, June 17 -- Siya Arora, Moitrayee Das

A regular day of doom scrolling on Instagram made me stumble upon a reel featuring a group of young men dancing synchronously-they had bleach-blonde highlights and donned skinny ripped denims. Both the caption and an overwhelming number of comments collectively assigned the group a label: Chapri. My friend, glancing over my shoulder, voiced her agreement. The word soon became ubiquitous and followed me beyond virtual spaces; listening to a certain hip-hop artist made you "Chapri," so did wearing a mass-market Chikankari Kurti.

Anything too flashy or gaudy triggered the term "Chapri," and it gradually replaced "cringe" in our collective vocabulary. Just as "cringe" operates, it was a harml...