Rhyming shyming

All of last week social media giggled and rippled faintly about the NaMo youth anthem Some newspapers published wideeyed reports on the fan who had made and posted this video A news channel ran a story online coyly titled lsquoNarendra Modi have you seen thisrsquo As if People said the song has gone viral Well therersquos viral and therersquos viral In five days the video had 100000 plus hits or a little over a lakh Compare this to the viralisation of Kolaveri Di threeanda halflakh hits within a week and therersquos some catch up to do proving that your odd poetry can go viral but stuff about love possibly works better than stuff about fascists Jai Ho IllustrationAmit Bandre I listened to the song somewhere between giggling and gagging It was a little too appalling to even be put in the sobaditrsquosgood category though it borderlined But on the whole I could not help but feel a little bad for Narendra Modi I mean think of Hitler often idol of fascist folks in India In his time he had the likes of Leni Reifenstahl make Nazi propaganda films Reifenstahl a diva a photographer actress and film director became famous with a film she made chronicling the Nuremberg Rally of 1934 which Hitler titled Triumph of the Will The film went on to win much international recognition and is generally considered one of the most significant documentaries made owing to its very impactful aesthetic and frequently leads to a discussion of how tremendous craft can be employed in the service of great evil Meanwhil NaMo has come up with slim pickings in this regard first he gets Mallika Sherawat trying to channel Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to Narinder sic Modi spectacularly offkey and sadly laughable And now the youth anthem lsquoWhorsquos gonna mar em NaMoNaMo Whorsquos gonna scar lsquoemrsquo To be fair perhaps the song does realise how unbearable it is because it also asks the question ldquoWhorsquos gonna bear us NaMoNaMrdquo Good then because it ainrsquot me babe Is this what it means to be a country of young people If so frankly wersquove got worse problems than Narendra Modi becoming NaMoPMGo as per the song What does it say about someone if the art they inspire is so uninspired Itrsquos something to think about surely Art is a fundamental cornerstone of human understanding It is necessary to human life as way of expressing our aspirations as well as what we sense but have not yet articulated People may dismiss aesthetic as a surface quality but in fact the way something is said or made says more about its intention and quality than the content So is this the sense Modirsquos fans have of him is this the aesthetic he calls up Nonsense lyrics Cogent Man Moment Man Exponent Man what does this mean This liberetto as the lsquofanrsquo Krishna Sugavanam calls it should come with a kunji yaar And while hersquos doing that he could also explain who the ldquothemrdquo that Modi of the physicality and genialty is going to mar and scar cut paste video in this media age and music that one commentator said is going to make it his new workout song If this song is a vision of the future then it is one in which we will hold ourselves up to no excellence only a kaam chalau depressing degradedness The consistently poor aesthetics Modi indicates an absence of vision a lack of larger ideas a philosophical basis for difference that should concern his fans when theyrsquore done rhyming shyming Paromita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at wwwparodevicom The views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paperu00a0