Has Neha Kakkar waged war on your nostalgia and how to revive it back?

Popular Culture and Deception of Memories

“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”

― Milan Kundera, Ignorance

The Internet is filled with '90s nostalgia pages' where many pilgrimage to revive their scared nostalgia. The people who like and share these posts also proudly call themselves as 90s kids. This is a strange cult. There is something bizarre about assigning some sort of prestige to call themselves the 90s ‘kids' even when most of them are currently middle age folks who are now so old that their favourite sweet dish is not ‘Dhara Tel main bani hue Jalebi’ but Gelusil antacid Liquid. 

Recently, many on the internet got angry when Neha Kakkar sang the remix version of Falguni Pathak's original song - Maine Payal Hai Chhankai. Many have posted angry statuses that this bastardised remix has ruined their 'entire childhood'. Although sadly, it is within the legal rights of T-Series to remix the song, many users even claimed that this is property theft and that the original singers and team should get their due rights. One may criticise Neha as much as possible, but she has to be given the due that she is responsible for invoking the fire in middle-class Indians to fight for workers' rights. Laal Salaam to Neha Kakaar!

Then there were many meme pages that understood a market in the internet outrage and made many fatphobic and body-shaming memes about the appearance of Neha to make this outrage profitable. 

All this anger and trolling because Neha Kakkar allegedly ruined their ‘precious’ childhood by waging a surgical strike on their nostalgia. 

But this again brings to the same question can any creative work that remix a famous work ruin it forever? There are different ways of looking at it. 

The first one is: If a not-so-gifted singer like Neha Kakkar can ruin your childhood memories, then perhaps your memories themselves are so lousy that they deserve to be ruined. 

The second one is that: Pop culture as a space is based on the idea of remixes. If you look at the pioneers of pop culture like Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, who created the vocabulary for this space,  then you'll realise that most of their work is based on remixes. One may argue about the quality of remixes in this space. Some are great, and some are downright terrible. For instance, I find these T-Series remixes absolutely bad, which are devoid of any creative value. I, like you all, cringe whenever I see them playing anywhere on the internet. In the Indian remix industry, I prefer the work done by '90s artists like Bally Sagoo, Bombay Vikings or, to some extent  DJ Aqeel . T-Series have entirely ruined the art of remixing, and it deserves all the blame that it receives. In fact, I have a personal vendetta against T-Series because they have removed many of my videos by sending copyrights strikes where I used small 10 seconds clips in my commentary videos. Even though when these videos come within the purview of 'fair use.

But despite my visceral detest for this musical label,  I don't want them to stop making remixes of any popular work. I believe that we are a bit too stuck in the concept of 'purity of the past' or 'sacredness of nostalgia' where we feel no one should be allowed to touch specific creative works. This ' idea of sacred' is not just limited to popular culture. A few years back, many Bengalis got very offended when Aniket Bera, an assistant research professor at the University of Maryland, gave a touch of colour to a clip from Satyajit Ray's first film Pather Panchali as part of an academic experiment. Many cried on Facebook that by giving colours to the black and white film of Mr Ray, the professor had taken away all the colours of joy from their memories. 

My problem is only with this line of thought where people get extremely offended whenever any popular work is touched, and then they write the angry obituary of death of their memories. 

I believe in popular culture; every work should be up for dissection, deconstruction and remixes. Nothing should be treated, to invoke the vocabulary of the present political atmosphere as a holy cow. One must understand that in the pop culture space, some works are beautiful, some as cringe, some as cringe plus beautiful, and some as cringe minus beautiful. I think all of these can and should exist. Most of the time, the unintended consequence of a bad remix is that they make the original work shine more in contrast. For almost a decade, the existence of Falguni Phatak was limited to blurry 480p videos on youtube or to Dandiya night parties where Gujjus party and dance till late at night after neat shots of sweet Dal Dhokli. 

This bad remix has at least reminded more and more people how melodious the original work by Falguni was. In fact, this is also a mark of modern-day success when some random internet user comments on your decade-old video "Jo bhi Neha Kakkar wala song sunke ke iss evergreen video pe aaya ho is woh mere comment ko like kare"

The overreliance on the past as some glorious and sweet time is also the hallmark of human experiences. Past and memories always have a certain aura of innocence. But this is also possible that the past was as mediocre as the present. Maybe the key to happiness lies in fun of enjoying the superficialities of both past and present. 

I’ll two quotes by two quotes by philosophers in the end.

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”

― Marcel Proust

“Chaaye mein dooba biscuit ho gaya. Main to Ainvayi ainvayi ainvayi ainvayi lutt gaya”

-Lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya on the The madeleine moment of Proust.