The wrong kind of music

Isn’t it amazing how powerful technology has made us today? If you hate an idea, or a person, you are free to let the whole world know, just a click away. That’s exactly what this girl, Rene Sharanya Verma, did. One look at her popularised video, “An Open Letter to Honey Singh”, will tell you how strong an opinion she has about this Yo Yo revolution, and just how confident she is of it.

Our problems with Yo Yo Honey Singh start with his name and get glaringly stuck at the lyrics. Hearing little five-year-olds sing “I swear chhoti dress mein, bomb lagdi mainu”, is disturbing. They barely understand what it all means. They just sing because YYHS songs are way too catchy to not sing along. No matter how much you despise his songs, you somehow end up grooving at those beats. The point of contention is, are the reasons this shallow for the adults to be happily supporting the songs, too? Definitely not. At least I hope so.

It is not just the feminists who’ve had a problem with the objectifying lyrics of Honey Singh’s songs. There also have been court petitions and cases filed. One of his songs even got banned in the aftermath of the Delhi rape case. Can you imagine? A song so offensive as to be disrespectful to a woman who got raped. Yet, inspite of all the opposition, Honey Singh continues to enjoy an unwavering fan following, with constant additions and subtractions.

Rene probably would never have thought her poetry slam would actually be viewed more than a million times. She starts with a rap in Yo Yo style, using various sarcastic modifications.

“hey girl tu lagti badi khoob, teri aankhon mein main jaata doob doob.

36 26 36 be my mehboob. I just made this stanza up so i could rhyme it with boob”

..and later culminates into a strong, motivating recitation.

“baby it’s not Maybeline, it’s you. You’re not just a masterpiece, you’re the painter too”

Just look at the video and see for yourselves!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soazvqpr53U

The reactions to videos essentially reflect what the Youtube populace supports, and otherwise. In this case, there were many in support, who gave away demeaning comments for Yo Yo and some also applauded the girl for bringing out what has been there but hardly questioned deeply. On the other hand, as is expected, there were people who blamed the girl (in their own words) for being ‘insecure’ and thereby ‘trying to gain attention by mocking an amazing celebrity’. One of the Yo Yo supporters came out with a whole new rap of his own, in defense of Honey Singh, which reads:

“... honey singh dedicates lines for beautiful girls in his rap not for u the fat crap ..tu kya blue eyes dikhayegi chasma hata moti tabhi teri aankh najar aayegi !! tere wargi bandi kha bomb ban payegi ghar baith moti 10.30 baje door pe tere cheese burst pizza ki delivery aayegi !! Shakespeare virre di line copy kar di tujhe desi kha smajh aayegi <<<<<you tube waikh kudiye honey singh kaa stardom smajh jayegi !!!!! tu to eminem ki ass like that te hi views badhayegi  tujhe bapu di gal kha smajh aayegi dope shope te muh naa faer kudiye ye reality jo tu badal nhi payegi !! love dose tujhe mil nhi payegi hater rhegi hater hi reh jayegi !!! in the end tu b EK DIN YO ! YOO ! CHILAYEGI”

This is precisely the kind of people that make the Indian rapper an unbeaten star. “We love Honey Singh! He rocks! Let’s just insult those who try to give us a rational angle to it. Yo yo!”  

There was a time when India was host to a brilliant youth music culture. There were upcoming bands and pop artistes, rappers even. But with time, we’ve seen the decline of the Indian music industry with its entire focus moving towards Bollywood mainstream. Now, when Honey Singh comes out with his independent-cum-Bollywood-albums package, laced with a lot of autotuning, pretence, western music video rip-offs, and a Punjabi swag, it is hard for the average Indian youth to oppose. Very few of us, who end up taking the lyrics seriously, bother talking against it.

We can always say that it’s just music, we must learn to enjoy it and not be critical about it. That’s where we’re wrong. It is not just music. It’s music, with a capability of injecting thousands of ideas in your mind, without your noticing it. These ideas eventually shape you and your entire intellect system. However far-fetched this may sound, it is a fact. We become what we think, don't we?

A lot of people might call it a publicity stunt. So be it. That, in no way, changes the kind of thoughts that have been put out through this video. With the never-ending Youtube wave causing chaos in unity, as well as diversity of thoughts, technology in our lives has been making sharp leaps. Let’s go with the flow, then?

Beyond the Internship

The month of December is a busy one for students in the second year of the B.Tech. program in our college. As part of the curriculum, the students are sent off in groups for a rural internship, under an NGO assigned by an appointed committee. This internship includes working with the NGO on one of its projects in a rural area in India, trying to incorporate the ICT education we've received so far.

The "compulsory" Rural Internship is supposed to be an enlightening experience for the highly excited sophomores, fresh out of the oppressive terrors of third semester. The post traumatic rehabilitation starts manifesting itself in forms of excessive excitement, planning, shopping and peaks of high five sessions with friends being sent together to intern. It is the official four weeks away from your normal life, with the kind of people you might never have met/seen and might never meet/see ever again in the future, all on your own, trying to help those people supposedly using your technical expertise.

For the internship, I got an opportunity to work with ‘Abhiyan’, an NGO centered in Bhuj-Kutch, Gujarat. It was the first time travelling to Bhuj for me, as well as the two friends that were grouped with me. I was sort of prying, looking for something peculiar right from the moment we reached Bhuj. This place had a major earthquake, man! Why does it look so normal? The irrelevance of the question dawned on me when I realized it had been almost 14 years since that time. Oh, well.

We were sent by the NGO to their field office at Khavda, a village 70 km north of Bhuj. On our way to Khavda, the driver told us that the road we were on led straight to Pakistan. I was so in awe with that mere idea of being so close to a country I've only looked at on a map, and heard of in the news. Little did I know, there were one too many moments of awe in store for me in the rest of the 4 weeks.

The NGO had us engaged in a project which we found to be perfectly suited to us. At Abhiyan, we joined an ongoing project which was in collaboration with a London-based organisation, Reach to Teach. This project mainly focuses on improving the quality and functioning of the education system in the villages of Kutch.

Our main role was to meet the highly irregular students at the schools and their families, realize the reasons, suggest solutions and bring as many students to school as possible. Secondly, as the condition of the female members of the respective School Management Committees of various villages is expected, and very truthfully so, to be weak in terms of awareness, let alone participation, we were to meet them and provide information about their roles and try to activate their participation.

I visited different villages almost every day, met different children and their families, had a new lesson learnt each day. On our very first day's visit to a village school, I saw a bunch of little kids gathering outside the office gate staring at the new women (yes, us) that had entered their territory. They were equally amazed to see us as we were to see them, I reckon. If they had camera phones like us, they'd also have probably taken a picture of us to show their friends, don't you think?

One of the weirdest things was that all the people in a village dressed in the same kind of clothes. By all, I mean all. Be it little eight month olds who couldn't even walk by themselves, or be it 80 year olds, they would all have the same kind of dresses. The males wore Pathani kurta and pyjama, both the same color. All the females wore this thing over their heads that, I found, was called dedho in Kutchi. While reading or writing at school, they'd have to put it behind their shoulders again and again, while it kept falling in front of their eyes by virtue of its dimensions and their angle. It felt like this euphemism to their everyday lives where they have this constant obstruction to moving forward in life.

All the villages that I was in-charge of, had Muslim communities. They had these peculiar kind of names like Sufaiya, Halima, Abadrim, Shahpad, Alma, etc. To them, my name was hard to get. There were very few times when someone asked me my name and didn't ask for it again. To them, the fact that I wasn't married at 19, was a big deal. To them, I was 'that madam from Gandhinagar who wants to bring my child to school'. To me, they were a new world.

My commute to all the villages would primarily be by motor bikes. The journeys were absolutely out of the world. The roads were in incredibly amazing condition. On almost all days, we were the only ones on the roads, there being negligible number of vehicles in the villages. Now, another interesting fact that I came to know of, was that the women in the villages waited to fall sick, just so they could get to travel to Khavda to the hospital! Never in their lives have they left their native villages. And here I was, 700 kilometer away from home.

One thing that holds enormous warmth in the memories of my internship is the sky. It was there that I realized, more consciously, that skies are different at different places. The kind of cloud formations, sunrises and sunsets, shades and hues, that I witnessed in Kutch, were such that I had never seen before.

One day I woke up early and got to see the sunrise. I stayed there for a long time, simply looking, and taking pictures of course, until the sun started hurting my eyes.

The kids were so pretty and nice there. Despite the major language barrier, I managed to communicate with them and their families even, with the broken Kutchi that I learnt over the weeks. It was extremely satisfying to have them understand what I tried to say and to understand what they were saying. Here in our daily lives, we hardly realize how huge an advantage having a common language is. When you don't know the other person's language, there's this big part of that person you will never get to know. That's one thing I regret. I was immensely interested in the people that I met there and I'm sure I could've learnt a lot of things if only I could speak better Kutchi.

Another wonderful memory is that of our visit to the fame of Kutch. One fine Sunday, we went to visit the Safed Rann (Literally, White Desert). Despite having heard quite a deal about how beautiful it is, what I felt after being there, right in the middle of a lot of whiteness, cannot be described. Majority of the feelings I had in the four weeks, cannot be articulated. Precisely why I have so many pictures here!

I was kinda pissed off with all the people stomping their shoes on the beautiful whiteness. It made the White Rann less white with all the brown mud surfacing from inside. But, well, what could we do.

Also, the Rann ('desert' in Gujarati), didn't actually have white 'sand'. It was more like salt. I learnt that the entire thing was actually river deposit. I filled the salt/sand in a tiny box and brought it back as a souvenir.

All of the four weeks, in retrospect, were entirely different from the life that I've lead so far; quite literally. My eating habits (no breakfasts, irregular lunches, self-made dinners), sleeping habits (way too early), bathing habits (once in four days, or so), speaking habits (an addition to my linguistic hall of fame); everything, every aspect of my life took a stunningly different direction.

Quoting one of my friends, it was "A December I'll never forget."