We know that lower-caste people have been kept away from wearing jewellery and expensive clothes by traditional caste conceptions. I am especially drawn to what is presumably Dhee’s hand, decked out in golden rings (with an elephant, resonating with the invitation of riding the elephants, “together as one”) reaching out and grabbing the soil, and then in a scene later, holding an elder’s hand. The groves of forests that had been their home was now barred from quenching their ‘thirst’ – “Nan anju maram valarthen / Azhagana thottam vachchen / Thottam sezhithalum en thonda nanaiyalaye” ( I planted five trees / Nurtured a beautiful garden / My garden is flourishing, Yet my throat remains dry) – a thirst symbolic of all that they had been yearning for.
In the scene in Enjoy Enjaami, wherein a hand is reaching out to the soil, that we later see another hand grab, is probably symbolic of two things: Arivu was influenced from the stories of his own ancestry, immigrant tea plantation workers from Sri Lanka, who came back to their home in India after colonialisation, and found that their lands had been taken away. Humans are not the central character in this narrative, they exist alongside nature. The aesthetic of the words and their portrayal interrogates our conceptions of internalised hierarchy that we, in our contemporary city lives, have so vehemently incorporated. The land we live on, that we eat from, was created by overtime fertilization provided by the excretions of animals that came before us. The lyrics of Enjoy Enjaami steps away from the isolated anthropomorphised ideals of humanity that we have become so used to – “Nayi nari poonaikundhan indha erikkolam kooda sondhammadi” (the lakes and ponds belongs to the dogs, foxes and cats too) – emphasises the equality that is inherent in nature but is deteriorated by exploitation by those with vested interests to the point that we have trouble acknowledging the fact that humans are supposed to be a part of nature, not an entirely different entity. So, when the video of Enjoy Enjaami opens with the lush green forest and drumbeats that are loud enough to shake the earth below them, it is a sense of freshness that engulfs the senses of the viewers. The mainstream ‘Indian’ music scene is, as Arivu himself states, Brahmanical and patriarchal, and is hostile to subaltern artists – incredibly notorious for its objectification of ‘fair and lovely’ (because colourism) women by dudes in expensive cars (and not to forget the city skyscrapers). So, when the video of Enjoy Enjaami opens with the lush green forest and drumbeats that are loud enough to shake the earth below them, it is a sense of freshness that engulfs the senses of the viewers.Īlso read: In Conversation With Anti-Caste Artiste Arivu: Rapping For Equality
Rooted in rebellion, made by Dalits, relating to Dalit subjectivities, it is a ‘celluloid movement’ inspiring social-cultural criticism aiming to regain the agency that has been denied to them, to honour the cultural practices that they have been humiliated for. Dalit art has always been a celebration of transgression of the regressive caste boundaries that have been imposed upon them.
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