As I sit down in the morning with a cup of tea, someone passes by the window blasting the latest Bollywood sensation – the very amazing song with never-seen before, extremely innovative lyrics -
“Hey aaj kal dil saala/Bounce kare hai mere seene mein
Milne lagi hai tu/Jab se ishq maheene mein”
- the famous, Beyonce Sharma Jayegi. Well, Beyonse* now, because, you know, changing a letter changes the entire inherent meaning of the song. Also, legal issues, you know? Beyonce who? We only know Beyonse. Does it make sense? No, it does not. But bear with me, it gets better.
After the cardio that was the ‘dil-bouncing’, we move on to the very (insert word) – keelis, along with the beautiful lyrics having a lot of non-problematic non-racist undertones -
“Bhadkeeli nakhreeli/ Chamkeeli lachkeeli/ Tu jo kamar yeh hilayegi,
Ho tujhe dekh ke goriya/ Beyonce sharma jaayegi”
I mean, where do I start? I do not trust mainstream Bollywood with issues like women-empowerment. And this song proved me correct in so many ways, because how can one appreciate a woman without bringing the other woman down, right? “The way you move your hips will put Beyonce to shame” – now let us consider the technicalities of this sentence. First, it is BEYONCE you are talking about. Second, have you seen her hip movements? Not to objectify her like the writers did, but that woman moves like a Goddess. The blatant disrespect is astounding.
At a point when the Black Lives Matter movement has been getting attention all over the globe with thousands of protests happening against racism everywhere, the Indian privileged mindset still remains regressive and trash. Anannya Pandey, one of the few products of nepotism who have aggressively promoted fairness products and is known for her fair skin (which is blatantly being portrayed in the music video) just adds fuel to the fire. Indians are infamous for their obsession with fair-skinned women, so much that the fairness creams ‘did not realize’ what harm they were doing in propagating this mindset, till 2020. That was when one of the most popular ones decided to change its name to remove the word ‘fair’. Visual arts is one of the most influential mediums of promoting social change, and the song playing on the very same obsession and (indirectly) promoting it just makes it more problematic. So much for body-positivity and being confident in your own skin.
“In an interview with Hindustaan Times, Khaali Peeli's director Maqbool defended the song's lyrics and said and there was never any question of disrespect, “First, without any hesitation or excuses we want to apologize to anyone offended. We assure you that the lyric in question was never intended racially. In fact, the term ‘goriya’ has been so often and traditionally used in Indian songs to address a girl, that it didn’t occur to any of us to interpret it in a literal manner." – Firstpost.
The clear lack of braincells in this lamest of statements is bewildering. There is a clearly evident lack of research or even common sensibility from the director of the movie. How could one read the lyrics, cast one of the fairer actresses while bringing down an African-American icon, and then claim that the implications did not ‘occur’ to him? What about the rest of the team? What are you all high on? Patriarchy or racism? I bet both.
While Twitter went berserk as it usually does, the makers were forced to take action. They used their galaxy-brains to make a very important change which focused more on negating the racism and misogyny – they changed the spelling of Beyonce to Beyonse.
Because obviously, the change of ‘c’ to ‘s’ means the world starts rotating in the opposite direction. All meanings get reversed. The song becomes an anthem for social justice now - talking about how the fair-skinned people face so much prejudice and how their hip-movements are not acknowledged enough. Also, now Beyonce will never know. *collective facepalms*
In other news, apparently, our culture and laws do not support LGBTQ+ people and gay-marriage, because we do not have gay-sex inscribed on the walls of our temples like Khajuraho.
“the Kamasutra affirms and recognizes same-sex relations, and there are several Hindu temples which have carvings that depict both men and women engaging in homosexual acts. There are also numerous Hindu deities that are shown to be gender-fluid and falling into the LGBT spectrum. Same-sex relations and gender variance have been represented within Hinduism from Vedic times through to the present day, in rituals, law books, religious or so-called mythical narratives, commentaries, paintings, and sculpture.” – Wikipedia.
The hashtags started trending on Twitter and I got into an argument with a very Sanghi, misogynist, casteist person (the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with India) about it, where he diagnosed me with AIDS for engaging in homosexual sex. Well, sir, I assure you I use protection when I have homosexual intercourse, it’s just that if I get AIDS somehow, it will be from a very heterosexual intercourse, from someone of your kind. But my guy refused to listen to facts about how you can still get AIDS even if you are a virgin heterosexual, you just have to be a drug-addict, that too injectables. No big deal. He just replied “fake news”, because that’s exactly what the sold-out Indian media and Whatsapp has taught him, to reject anything pointing out your naivety as “fake news”. I bet my life he religiously reads the Whatsapp forwards every morning to jerk off every night by commenting “fake news”. Ironical. Anyway, I told him the male pleasure spot was up the ass and he should try having homosexual intercourse sometimes, and blocked him. Enough homophobia for a day.
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