Check out US-based Indian musician Madame Gandhis new video, aimed to make the world a better place
Madame Gandhi (in green) in a still from the video. Pic/Sajna Sivan
The child is the mother of the woman." This gender modification of a William Wordsworth quote fits in with the video for US-based musician Madame Gandhi's new single, Waiting for me. It shows a bunch of schoolgirls who are turned into near clones of each other, thanks to a vapid education system that makes them unquestioning members of a consumerist society. The first few scenes show Gandhi taking on the role of a human rights activist, giving a speech that has the line, "We always assume our own powerlessness but never our own power." But, the children featured later are robbed of their power of critical thinking like an orator robbed of her larynx. It thus becomes Gandhi's job to show them how they don't have to stand up for anything in life that they don't believe is kind, just, and loving.
Contrasting images of a group of carefree, Bohemian girls frolicking in the wild reinforce that message. The music involves hip-hop rhymes punctuated with Indian influences including the dholak. This is the first video that Gandhi has shot in the country. Mumbai-based Misha Ghosh has directed it, and she's chosen the opposite colour scheme of grey and fluorescent green to depict how the schoolchildren always have two choices before them — to eventually lead a subjugated existence (grey), or one that's of their own making (green).
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But there's another angle. The video is shot in an industrial backdrop (emphasising how the girls are clones of each other). Both Ghosh and Gandhi tell us that the green palette also references the colour you typically have on warning signs for hazardous chemicals at such complexes. So, watch out, child. That's what the single is saying. You can either let society cage you like a factory-farmed animal. Or, you can run free with the power of your own critical thinking.
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