Meaninglessly Yours

Meaninglessly Yours

There are some people in this world of whom if you see, or hear, or both see and hear, only one thing comes to your mind. And that one thing is – how bereft of anything approaching meaningfulness can somebody’s life really be. I’m going to talk about one such person, none other than Mr. Yo Yo Honey Singh.

This man teaches you lessons in management. Lessons that you won’t be able to grasp from books. And he does it so swiftly, you won’t even notice.

The first one is from Accountancy. We’ve all used the concept of materiality in the subject, the concept asks us to selectively discard all the immaterial transactions as compared to the big picture. But this man takes this consideration on its very head. He takes all the immaterial things of the world, things you won’t give a damn about, and make songs out of them. Take ‘Aaj Blue Hai Paani Paani’. As if the poor chap hasn’t seen blue water all his life. But I don’t blame him. He might have spent his life on the banks of Ganga, never having seen what blue water looks like. Anyway, these songs become big hits, a proof of account legitimacy. Hats off! Now please don’t be surprised if tomorrow you’re searching for some book on the subject online and there emerges a pop-up showing the bestseller of the week in the category as ‘Kudi Banai Balance Sheet KPMG De Naal by Gippy Grewal Ft. Yo Yo Honey Singh’.

That’s not all. He teaches us major lessons in Economics as well. So the crux of the subject is on maximization of output from limited resources. And boy, this man is a genius at this art. Using merely two words, he has produced an array of songs – bestsellers worldwide, bestsellers in the country, and more importantly, bestseller in Punjab. Only two goddamn words – Party and Daaru, and synonyms thereof. And it takes some talent to fit unrelated words into unrelated songs. And suddenly I see all the Amartya Sens, George Akerlofs and Paul Krugmans running for their lives.

Jokes apart, this trend that he’s a pallbearer of, has impacted our society, the way we think and behave. Or is it?

Yes he does glorify things that civilized men call debauchery. But do you think a person would start drinking vodka if Honey Singh consumes 4 bottles of it per capita per day? Or a young boy would learn how to rape by listening to his didactic accounts on the same? Not really.

All I can say is that we, the people of India, have learnt to keep aside what we regard as ‘meaningless’. Be it a politician shouting into our faces day in and day out that he’ll bring revolution to the country, or a not-so-good-looking lady promising to strip if India wins any random thing under the sun. We’ve learnt to selectively overlook all meaninglessness in and around our living spaces. We have grown as a society. And that’s a very welcome sign.

So let the man produce more of it, lest poor desi DJs should die of hunger.

The only thing I’d like to say in the end is that personally I despise this man. But apart from Accountancy and Economics, I’d like to learn from him another thing. And that is marketing.