Mayank Shekhar: Bol na aunty, aau kya? Yes/no?

A still from Om Prakash Mishra's rap, Bol na aunty, aau kya. Pic/Youtube

There is no greater pleasure than being on star news anchor Arnab Goswami's side in a debate. And then being on his show. Foremost, he'll let you talk. Two, he'll help you gang up to wholly decimate the opposition. The reverse, of course, being equally true.

I'd instantly said yes then to getti­ng on his programme, late 2012, early 2013 - around the time everyone was rightly outraging over the 'Nirbhaya' gang rape in Delhi. The nation wanted to know what had caused it. Of course, the problem's complex. But rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh had been identified as the villain.

Honey's concert in Gurgaon had been cancelled by cops - on public demand, as it were. An FIR had been lodged against him in Lucknow. Could a song incite someone to infli­ct violence upon a woman? Perhaps. But not anymore than someone kill­ing his uncle because he watched Hamlet. Going even further, hate speech, I guess, is the ultimate test for free speech. It must be allowed. Because at least then, you know who's saying what, or who to stay away from.

Now Arnab, by his own admission, is "socially, a liberal." But I found myself completely in a corner, singularly defending Honey Singh. For one, as is obvious, bringing up on prime time TV an obscure 'rape song' from an early part of a rapper's career, which most of us, including me, hadn't even heard, and contents of which Honey himself felt ashamed enough to deny ownership, only led to 'mainstreaming' it to the level of 'Streisand Effect'.

What's Streisand Effect? In 2003, singer-actor Barbara Streisand had gone berserk, along with her battery of lawyers, to suppress photographs of her Malibu bungalow that had appeared on a relatively unknown website. Her massive public attempt to censor had the unintended effect of globally publicising the information across the Internet.

This argument didn't cut it. If there was any space behind me to push against the wall, Arnab wished to know if any singer around the world had got away singing a supposed 'rape song'. Hell, yeah. Rap as a genre in itself is a flag-bearer of misogynistic lyrics. And with 'impersonation rap' - where the artiste takes on, say, the character of a faux gangster, he does not really sing bhajans. "But that's American culture," Arnab argued. Sure. Indian culture, if you may, is actually full of crassly vulgar lyrics, even belted out by elderly women at family functions, passed off as folk songs. The men indulge in sexually lewd jokes far more; these would perhaps qualify as bachelorette-party humour were women to champion their own versions of it. Most of this remains in private domain - the proverbial locker room, or the WhatsApp group.

Do these jibes unconsciously reveal deep-seated mindsets? Maybe, but more than that, they test bounds of political incorrectness to a point that you find them funny, because they're so frickin' gross! "Eww," is the common response. It's the same with kids when they taunt you with their 'poop jokes' (or toilet humour).

A lot of the adult stuff spills over into pop culture as 'cringe-pop', which explains the dementedly mi­so­gynistic, cringe-worthy Gunda (1998) as a cult hit in college campuses, ever since the early 2000s. Or one random Om Prakash Mishra's rap, 'Bol na aunty, aau kya' that went viral on the Internet last week.

The 'aunty' in the lyrics (like 'bhabhi' in Indian porn) obviously refers to a boyhood fantasy for an older woman, rather than an endorsement for incest.

Frankly, I would've never heard of the song if so many on the web hadn't collectively been outraged by it, for the 'Streisand Effect' to eventually set in. Now that we know of it, should we not view it? It's hard for curious cats to stay away. Now that I've viewed it, should I have a problem with it? To my mind, no. It's just stupid stuff, unworthy of excessive attention, let alone draconian censorship. These are basic, first-principle arguments.

A female journalist at The Quint had an issue with the track. She wanted YouTube to block it from their site. YouTube agreed with her and others. The song was yanked off. This was terrible. What's worse?

The girl was trolled on Twitter, and elsewhere, which has become the new 'normal' for human online behaviour. Most of us, who are migrants to social media (rather than young 'natives' who're growing up on it), tend to perceive online filth as separate from offline civilization.

But what happens when the line between online/offline, public/private begins to blur? Hundreds of male fans of the 'aunty aau kya' track show up, in support. The columnist receives rape/death threats, citing slain journalist Gauri Lankesh's murder as a possible consequence. The website has to pull down her piece.

Let alone that girl, I don't know what this does to the sense of security among women on Indian streets being cat-called as 'aunty' anyway. I stand frozen, conflicted over a bloody song. Doesn't it take just one nut, to crack, in the midst of this anyway? Or is one being simply paranoid? Frankly, I didn't give a damn, once. Now, I don't know.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com