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Journalism of Courage
I don’t drink, except for a quarterly glass of wine or a too-sweet-to-ignore cocktail when I’m somewhere I don’t have to drive or work. I don’t mind people drinking, or getting drunk once in a while. It is their life after all. I even love songs written during periods of alcohol-induced brilliance and also those that eulogise the numbness that alcohol induces in some people, like Jagjit Singh’s soul-stirring Main Nashen Main Hoon.
However, that is a far cry — no pun intended — from the ‘Chaar Botal Vodka’ that forces me to switch off the radio during my early morning walk, or drive to office. For the love of God, Bacchus excluded, who would want to listen to the lyrical version of a drunk’s menu card when they are headed for office? Not me. I can hear some of you disagree, trying to hold back that beer soaked burp.
Before you think I am going after Punjab, let me tell you that in my home state of Kerala, my country cousins do not need any a reason, not even a song, to drink. And while I am arguing about a spirited song in the morning, many in Kerala start their day by queuing up in front of the local beverage store. I have seen the impact alcoholism has on many friends and even some in the family. And that is why I think things are getting a bit out of hand.
Today, the faint remnants of sleep that I had left while starting my morning walk were summarily dismissed when I heard the new rendition of Lalla, lalla lori, a lullaby that even a Malayalee like me has come to associate with warm motherly love. But this version was more about a fizzy katori of booze, which the boy was having instead of the Bournvita he had stopped drinking. Even getting into the details is giving me a headache, that is the kind of hangover, or should I say aftertaste, this song leaves. It is just wrong as so many levels.
In college we have all created our share of parodies of popular numbers. But this is not a parody, there is nothing funny about it. It is just an ode to the urge to be drunk at unearthly hours and at a every inappropriate age.
My bigger issue with the song is that it is composed by Vishal Dadlani, the singer composer whose affiliation with the Aam Aadmi Party urges all Indians to RISE UP, as “for too long, you and I’ve been quiet”.
Yes Vishal, I am rising up, because you didn’t stand up and say this song is not good enough to be sung outside some loo in a college hostel, you didn’t say it was not good enough to be heard by a four-year-old. I am the father of a four-year-old and that is my worry. He might not know it is not a song for sleepless kids like when his father was growing up, but an invitation to listen to a Hundred Pipers bring a piece of Scotland to more Indian homes.
If these are not surrogate ads, what are? While jingles for sodas and music albums that you can never buy off the shelf, but still promise to “energise you”, try and sell you a brand on the sly, these songs sell a whole culture that leads only to painful death in some liver institute.
Sorry, but let’s not listen to this version of Lalla, lalla lori. Let us keep some our katoris filled with milk and not whisky, unless you want to put a generation to sleep.
