Aamir Aziz, 30, is stunned that Pink Floyd co-founder and bass player Roger Waters read out one of his poems at a London rally last week.
“I could not believe… I don’t know how he got it…. I’m stunned. I got to know about it late, after all my friends already knew,” the Mumbai resident told The Telegraph.
Aziz is a trained civil engineer from Patna who spent a decade in and around the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi from where he has a diploma and an engineering degree. He moved to Mumbai to try his hand at acting in 2016.
Waters read out an English translation of his poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega (Everything Will Be Remembered) at a rally demanding freedom for the whistleblower and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“I had written it out of helplessness seeing the intensity of the violence at JNU (by a mob in January this year),” he said.
“It was written from the point of view of an innocent person, a peaceful person, a person committed to love. A blind student, some kid from somewhere who just wanted a better life, was beaten (during the JNU violence). Why them?”
The poem has become an anthem at the protests against the new citizenship matrix.
While studying at Jamia, Aziz had been a member of the CPI’s Indian People’s Theatre Association. He had been drawn to the performing arts out of curiosity.
“I had heard (people talk) about the pain of individuals. Here they were talking about the lives of people and the pain or grief of a class. It was very intriguing but I could relate to it. Life was not just about oneself,” he said.
After a couple of years at Jamia, he learnt to play the guitar from a friend and was attracted to American folk artistes like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, blues singer Robert Johnson and rock legends Pink Floyd. When he started creating his own music, he drew the lyrics from the poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sahir Ludhianvi and Habib Jalib.
After moving to Bollywood, he immersed himself in doing cameo roles and working as an assistant to directors and producers. But an image continued to haunt him: that of two cowherds being hung from a tree by a Right-wing mob.
“We have become numb to lynchings and hate speeches. (His first music video) Achhe Din Blues was an effort to recreate visuals of violence that made us feel that something bad had happened,” he said.
The video came out in March last year and brought him fame. The BBC and Scoopwhoop recorded him reciting his poems Main Inkaar Karta Hoon and Jamia ki Ladkiyan during the protests against the new citizenship regime in Delhi, while he was visiting the capital. He shot Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega at the Shaheen Bagh protest site.
Aziz has been unable to get over the trauma of this week’s Delhi riots, though his poetry is being shared almost as a catharsis by those equally shocked at the violence.
‘“Heartbreaking’ is a small word…. It is devastating…. I’m unable to receive the news of the riots. I haven’t been able to put my mind in the right place,” he said.
