To approach the new-age groovy with a blank state

It’s just another day streaming some hot music while hitting the tracks that I was bombarded with a new Spotify recommendation. It’s the new, latest track by BAWA titled Gadi Chale. Well, nothing new about men and their fascination for cars and gadgets. But, this time despite finding the song new-age groovy, I was pretty offended from within. This is because, a couple of days ago I read a headline titled, “Delhi Woman Dies After Car Drags Her For 12 Kilometers On New Year Morning” (NDTV) and in relation to this episode if you happen to listen the lyrics of the song, more so as an Indian women, I am pretty sure you are bound to get offended too. For reference, I am, hereby, sharing you the lyrics of the song in question, it goes on like this: 

Gadi Chale Gadi Chale Gadi Chale

Gadi Meri Dilli Se Mohali Chale

Aage Piche Kabhi Dekhte Ni Hum

Hatt Piche Beta Mot Ki Sawari Chale

Loose translation:

My car runs, my car runs

My car speeds from Delhi to Mohali

We never see neither in front nor in the rear 

Get out of the way, son, it runs like the vehicle of death

I mean, it is not if I do not understand the adrenaline rush you get after listening to such kinds of songs, here ‘such’ mean songs that propagate misogynistic attitudes, gun culture or vendetta for instance. But despite all this, it becomes quite imperative to know the gruesome horror it could bring to the young minds when they are fed with songs that valorizes such kinds of behavior. Here, I am aware of the fact that I could be asked to just shut up because, of course, I come with a label attached in the times we are living in, that is of a “woke feminazi”. Still, I would like to emphasize how important it is to approach art with an informed mindset even if you do not agree with the arguments I shall be carrying forward. 

For, I have seen people refusing to continue with a therapist just because they think they are too smart right in the first meeting itself. Or, rather people who continue with the harrowing process and still cannot make anything out of it because they lack the very basics that you need to know before encroaching upon a subject of whatever kind. Somehow they did not know the simple fact that you cannot simply trade off your dirty work with someone and do nothing about it yourself. 

Don’t worry, the only reason why I gave this previous rant is to understand that without prior knowledge and that too in-depth knowledge, you simply cannot take whatever is fed to you as it is. This is why there are many people who spend years and years altogether studying a specific subject and still do not assume themselves as the master of the same. For humility can take you where aggression does not have the least chance to venture.  

Let me share with you another example when I was at complete odds with the lyrics of a song. Miraculously, it was added in a report on 'Sexual Harassment at Workplace', I happen to read in a course on feminism back in my college days. The song was titled choot and it is composed by popular rap artist Honey Singh. You can google the lyrics which any sane person would call as utterly misogynistic and more so it feeds on attaining some kind of manhood out of literally using violence against a woman by using a language that is extremely derogatory as the title of the song itself. 

Putting aside the doctrine of freedom of expression which grants an artist the right to produce whatever he/she wills of which I am quite a supporter, for censorship is better left with the audience to decide, I am pained by the fact how it instills negative attitudes in the minds of young children, mostly boys in a patriarchal society. I mean, you could for yourself, judge the impact it has on the mind of a young boy who is born and raised in a patriarchal society where the people whom he looks up to, justifies beating of women and that too by shouting on the top of their voices. 

Hence, Art, like any subject for that matter, be it any form, has to be approached with a mindset that is informed and balanced towards the pros and cons of its consumption . It is certainly not that simple to provide god-like attributes and hence blind faith in any ideology or any human. Those people who watch Rick and Morty and state that Rick is the epitome of narcissistic, nihilist culture and follows in his footsteps are foolish to not even know why a figure like him exists in the first place. Nor people who are blind followers of the drug culture just because some rap artists produced a rap on the experience, know all the full-fledged nuances of the negative impacts of such a faith. It’s funny but I somewhere heard a rap song exclaiming out loud that, “I want to ride you like a jeep” and listening to this if someday some boy is going to assume that all women are vehicles or merely an object to be used, then I am afraid it is not his unwillingness to know that is devastating but rather the ones who let him continuously believe that it is so and here I stress to exclude the artist.

I just remembered that sometime back I wrote in a post that you gotta hold an idea in your right hand and dissociate everything until only the idea is left, then closely look for what you find there to finally ask yourself what do you associate now. You would be surprised to find that it would be just fractions and fragments of the idea. The idea as an entity of wholeness is a myth to begin with. It is a bit poetic but I genuinely believe that if we put all our official commitments aside for a moment, no idea could ever stand the test of time. Ideas are blurry and societies shape them not the other way round. It's the beauty of it. 

So, next time you read, hear or see something, if you are going to approach it with a mind full of prejudice instead of a blank state then trust me you better not have it at all. As then you will be only left with the guise that you understood it rather than actually understanding it and that my friend is extremely dangerous in times divided like ours. In short, developing a prejudice is never the answer, neither prior to any knowledge system nor afterwards when you open a Pandora's box of discourses on it.

Also, just to be a little more clear, I would shamelessly accept that you could sometimes find me dancing my brains out on songs that are questionable on account of their man-hating rituals and their cutting-off-the-phallic business. But, that does in no way adrift me from my belief that the root cause of all evils is all those males, females and other gender identities included, who do not educate themselves about the necessity to inculcate the young minds with the idea that as a society, we are together, when we empower each other and doomed when we silence each other’s misgivings by enforcing a mere system of ideas on them.