‘The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” -Milan Kundera
Amir Aziz’s ‘Acche Din Blues’, which was released on the eve of 2019 Lok Sabha elections, is a gentle yet strong reminder of what we, as a society of “humans”, have lost during the last five years of #AccheDin. The famous French novelist and dramatist, Francoise Sagan had once said: “Art must take reality by surprise.”
Aziz’s Acche Din Blues does exactly that. It takes into account the ‘normalized’ reality of communal violence and hatred by surprise and hits the viewer right on the head. It forces the viewer to think beyond the ordinary. On one hand, our textbooks are filled with stories of communal harmony. While on the other hand, we have made it difficult for the minority communities to walk around freely with their religious identities.
‘Andheri galiyon se nikla ik noor khada tha daldal pe, apne sar pe apni pehchaan ka boajh sambhaale’
(As I passed through these dark streets and saw a young man, standing in quicksand, Carrying on his head, the baggage of his identity)
Amidst high-decibel prime-time debates, we can see the Modi wave diminishing. The six-minute video showcases a 30-year long journey. It shows the events following the demolition of the Babri Masjid and is narrated through the course of one single day. The film contains a mix of Hindi and Urdu. The protest song is a commentary on the quantum of hatred, which has become an intrinsic part of our society in the last five years.
Amir Aziz uses the metaphor ‘Pagal Awara Kutta’ (mad stray dog)’ to represent the voices of the opposition. A mad dog is an outcast and should be avoided. In the same vein, the voices which have resisted the current regime and its politics of polarization have been branded ‘anti-national’, ‘Pakistani’, ‘Urban Naxals’, etc.
A few moments within the video will remain in your subconscious for a long time. An image of a manual scavenger floating in a sewer, which Aziz expresses through the lines ‘marey talab me zinda machli tair rahi thi (A fish was swimming in a dead/destroyed pond)’. The second moment depicts the Una Lynchings, but the most glaring image is that of Latehar lynchings, where two Muslims were lynched to death.
Quite interestingly, Aziz does not talk only about the blues. He also talks about hope. He shows us kids who are untouched by hatred.
“It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love.
This is how the whole scheme works.
All good things are difficult to achieve, and bad things are very easy to get”
~ Confucius