Bhubaneswar: Odia boy Samir Rishu Mohanty aka ‘Big Deal’ has again raised a strong voice against racism through his new rap song ‘Are You Indian’ in which he tried to point out the discrimination suffered by people from the North-Eastern region.
The video which was released July 6 has been viewed 1,08,943 times and is creating a huge sensation. The video was produced, written and engineered by Big Deal in collaboration with Qyuki.
Nitin Jawale, the director of Odisha Tourism said, “Samir Rishu Mohanty aka Big Deal BD has great depth in thoughts and in this video he comes up with some mind blowing, thought provoking lyrics and equally good rendition. The prejudices suffered by our brethren from NE is very well expressed. National and international channels should take note of this.”
The Odisha born and Bangalore settled Big Deal shows in the video every possible type of humiliation that people of North Eastern origin are subjected to.
The song delves deep into the long existing sensitive relationship between the North East and mainland India.
The song articulates both sides of the story and is presented in the form of a conversation that many think, but nobody speaks about. It is designed to spark empathy and build unity.
In the video the seven characters, each representing a region of India, is divided into two groups. One group represents mainland India and the other, North East India. The video was very character oriented and each character had to deliver their respective lines, intently and intensely and so they did.
It was a very serious environment at the shoot because everyone had to get into the character and perform their parts well.
All characters involved were good friends and believed the issue needed addressing. The shoot was successful and we’re extremely happy with the final result, Samir said.
“I had faced racism from childhood because of the way I look. I have a Japanese mother and my father is an Odia, so I have mongoloid features. In my school at Darjeeling we had North East Indians and mainland Indians. Even though I looked like a North Easterner those guys never included me in their community and took me to be a mainlander. I was again discriminated by people who looked like me. I have experienced both sides of the story,” Samir added.
Labelling it an ‘anti-racism rap’ Samir said that this was by far the hardest and longest song he has ever written, slogging for 10-12 hours for seven straight days till he came up with the lyrics.
The other artiste who played the part in the video are South Indian Gubbi (Rapper), Muslim Guy (Stephen Kumar) Bengali Woman (Ashmita C. Stephen), IT guy (Prashant Kumar Singh), North Eastern guy (Joex Pach) North Eastern girl (Tsering Tsemda).