Kunal Khemu dances to some nondescript Punjabi song as a battery of white girls seduce him. The set is a dilapidated factory that has been converted into a party scene. Booze flows, as does water inside mini, faux-swimming pools. The dance is abysmal, and so is the music, but that hardly matters. Such is the cult around Honey Singh, the composer of this song, that there is little doubt we will be hearing it at parties and DJ-themed wedding events all over the country over the coming days.
The song, titled "Aankhon, Aakhon" from the upcoming film Bhaag Jonny, is Singh's return to films after an inexplicable break during which he was rumoured to have returned to Punjab to recuperate from an unidentified illness. Released last week on YouTube, it has already clocked close to a million hits. That may not amount to much in the viral world of social media but it gives us some idea of the continued cachet of Singh's music, in spite of his self-enforced break.
As for the song itself, it is so predictable, right down to the facial expressions of the white dancers, that it completely vindicates the AIB spoof of a few days ago, in which the comedy group presented the definitive template of a Honey Singh song. That spoof had Irrfan Khan shaking and grooving to, well, a non-descript Punjabi song, except it had generic lyrics that, in a smartly meta fashion now common to AIB spoofs, tell the viewer what happens in the song even as the action within it proceeds.
Sure enough, in the spoof sundry girls fall all over the male protagonist, there are random intonations to living it up, there is booze and a drug-addled haze, the works. I bet Irrfan Khan, one of our most gifted actors, jumped at the opportunity to poke fun at something we would never come across in his rarefied work. The spoof was so good that Akshay Kumar, who has lately become a messiah for such songs, made a public statement registering his offence.
Don't get me wrong. I don't find Honey Singh's music universally bad. My tastes in music, at any rate, are rather utilitarian. I will listen to anything that sounds good to the ears without worrying about its genesis or its place on the cultural hierarchy. This has been the subject of some discomfort among my friends who think I should aspire to a higher ideal. I try - I do - but I can't help raising the volume when some cloyingly sentimental Bollywood music plays on the radio.
Besides, I really enjoyed some of Honey Singh's earlier songs, such as "Brown Rang", in which he expressed his love for brown-skinned girls whom he, good heavens, claimed to prefer to white girls. Who does that, right? In a country where even respected multinationals cannot stop themselves from selling skin-lightening creams because Indians hungrily lap them up, I found "Brown Rang" a wonderful piece of reform art.
But then there was the sly misogyny of his songs: his suggestion that he would take an "available girl" to a hotel for sex, but not one who is "different", which translates ostensibly to a girl steeped in bharatiya sanskriti. As my straight roomies laughed and jived to "Blue Eyes", one of his biggest hits, I was struck by the casual narcissism of the song's lyrics:
"Suna tere college mein mere gaane ban hai; padhne likhne ka tera na koi plan hai; pass kara dun, phone ghuma dun; principal bhi baby Yo Yo ki fan hai"
He knew he was raising havoc - which he was, since his songs marked a common enough cultural moment when a generational divide is visible in who appreciates a piece of art and who does not. But more, he was basking in it. The image of a stern college principal liking his song was immediately recognisable as a guilty pleasure, one no right-thinking person would acknowledge.
This devil-may-care attitude gives him a darkly attractive rebellious streak that has endeared him to a certain young demographic. But rebellion which enforces stereotypes is no rebellion at all. Honey Singh comes from a part of the country where anti-women attitudes remain entrenched. While his songs reflect the desire of the young to break free of the shackles of convention, they paradoxically also reinforce men's inability to look at women beyond traditional patriarchal tropes of devi vs slut.
On latest evidence, it is apparent that he will continue to belt a certain kind of music that is, if nothing else, unoriginal. Will I tune in? I don't think so. Will he continue to be popular? Of that I am certain. If our mistaken modernity is about having sex before marriage but judging the person for making that choice, Honey Singh captures this hypocrisy without irony. That he does this in foot-tapping music to which even uncles and aunties can't resist dancing seems like a sure-shot formula for long-term success.
Every week, Eye Culture features writers with an entertaining critical take on art, music, dance, film and sport
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
