Navigating Neelsandar with Pasha Bhai, The Face of Dakhni Rap

On November 4th, 2022, rapper Pasha Bhai aka Mohammad Affan Pasha and producer Demixx Beats aka Syed Awaise Pasha released Bangalore Ka Potta, a debut full-length project from the duo that would quickly become the talk of the town, and rightly so.

Spanning an immersive runtime of about 42 minutes, the album tackles themes of personal identity, casteism, religious discrimination, linguistic and cultural heritage, and institutional violence, situated primarily in (but not limited to) the context of Neelsandar, a suburb in Bengaluru. Across 14 tracks, Pasha Bhai and Demixx draw a portrait of the city, sketching a sonic picture of a different character type in each track, intimately revealing the influences that have helped shape them. In essence, the project is a cyclic exploration; both of Bangalore’s Pottas, and equally so, of the Pottas’ Bangalore.

Speaking about why he was drawn to creating an album in Dakhni, he recalls how in the first grade, his family moved to Neelsandar and enrolled him in a school. “They had a form that had a question asking what my mother tongue was. My whole family was confused,” Pasha Bhai says. His mother – who did all the form-filling in the family – wrote in Urdu, considering it was “associated with the national identity of Muslims in the country.”

As he grew up, he heard friends call what he spoke “broken-Urdu” and learned about Dakhni. “[It was a] term I had heard of not as a language, but as reference to people belonging to a lower caste,” the artist says. Producer Demixx – who lives in the same neighborhood as Pasha Bhai and hails from the town of Chintamani –  adds at this point, “When someone calls your language broken, there is a sense of shame that comes with it. We South Indians are proud people…but in this case, there was always a sense of inferiority complex. It is because of not knowing where we come from.”

Pasha Bhai’s first memory of seeing (and hearing) Dakhni spoken on screen came when he saw the actor Mehmood in movies. “My grandmother, who was a domestic worker in Benson Town, worked in one of the houses where Mehmood saab would visit often. My mother told me fond stories of his humor, which also pertained to the kind of roles he did on screen. Since he was a funny person who spoke Dakhni, in a way, people began associating Dakhni in Bollywood as a funny language — which did something to the culture,” the artist says. Then, there was Johnny Lever’s usage of Dakhni as the character Lingappa in the 1995 Bollywood movie Karan Arjun.

He wouldn’t draw comparisons, but considers his new album “an important project for the kids.” Demixx adds, “Bangalore Ka Potta is for other pottas too — it is to represent them, and not just our stories.”

For those who say Bengaluru doesn’t have a sound, Bangalore Ka Potta etches it out, making for an immersive listen, more heightened if you’re actually riding through the streets. Demixx adds, “In certain places, we made the mix muddy on purpose, using ad-libs from rap cyphers, including the one we did at Church Street to protest the live music ban in Bangalore. It is supposed to make the listener feel as if they’re there with us, in a cypher circle with instruments and voices surrounding them.” Elsewhere, Circle Tone says the goal on the album sonically was to make it sound professional from an engineering perspective but also “keep Bangalore’s character and essence alive.”

The album begins with the “Waakkhi Intro?” (‘Waakkhi’ meaning ‘outstanding’) where Pasha can be heard walking around his neighborhood reciting poetry to himself, wondering where he started from and where he is now. Then, with “Eid Ka Chaand,” one of his most popular songs yet, Pasha captures his experience of going to tea stalls and listening to multiple conversations at once, learning to listen to Bengaluru and curating stories for the album. The track is arguably one of the strongest on the album, and explores the psyche of a person (Affan), who is like the moon on Eid – shy, hidden, observing from a distance. With “Bengalore Ki Daastaan,” Pasha explores the vibrancy of the city’s street culture, and transitions into “ArtKatoKya?”where he negotiates questions of what art is and is meant to evoke in conversation with his friend, Maahir, who claims that art is meant to incite whatever emotion in the audience that the artist intended. In the track, he discusses how it cannot be art if it’s a piece on ‘disgust’, consumed with compliments with from wine-sipping crowds at a gallery. It’s supposed to be discomforting.

The album quickly meanders into darker themes, starting with “Aidavalli” (meaning abrupt, absurd and unpleasant, depending on context). Pasha says, “Whenever something goes wrong, we say ‘Aida hoga’, meaning some scandal has happened.” The rapper explores institutional oppression and the shortcomings of older generations, as well as their consequent effects on the younger generation. The album breaks for an interlude with “azaan.wav (interlude),” which captures the azaan Pasha Bhai grew up listening to every day of his life. Demixx provides context and says, “As Muslims living in Bangalore, that is the one sound we hear every day till the day we die. In that sense, there is no Bangalore without the Azaan. There is no Potta,”

With “Tumare Bawa,” Pasha explores the attitude of authority and dominance. “This track is a nightmare captured in a song. My friend’s father was jailed for life. Some of my neighbors were jailed for robberies and murder. Looking at their families’ suffering, I developed a deep fear and trauma, which would manifest itself as a nightmare where I am being taken to jail. I promised myself that no matter what I do, I would never go to jail, for the sake of my mother, who would have to go through a lot in such a situation,” the artist says.

As it turns out, while “Tumare Bawa” was being mixed at a home studio in the locality of HSR Layout, police barged in and picked up the artist. “They took us halfway to the police station, before we managed to convince them to let us go. It was almost as if the song was asserting its right to exist. It reassured me that it was the right song to make,” says Pasha Bhai. Then with “Kumbhakarna,” Pasha Bhai explores the vices of gluttony and sloth, before talking explicitly about himself for the first time through an exploration of the neighborhood he was born in, on the indefatigable “Neelsandar.”Then, with “Adikass,” Pasha Bhai explores the character of a person who wants the world to burn. “When you grow up seeing much worse than what most people see in their surroundings, you don’t care what you score in school. Stuff like that does not matter. What matters is knowing what would save me on the streets and in my neighborhood. With ‘Adikass,’ I talk about that feeling — of not giving a fuck, of being angry at the world,” the rapper says. In some ways, it is also an ode to Mohammed Mukkaram Pasha aka Varda, a young college student who was wrongfully shot by the military upon accidentally entering a military establishment while trying to escape the police for speeding, in 2008.

The album and the point that Pasha Bhai has reached – he was originally Affan and then rapped under the moniker NEX. He says of his now-permanent moniker, “If I called myself ‘Pasha,’ I would be a commoner — for every second or third guy in Bangalore, nay, India, is Pasha. However, over time, I have come to realize that it is exactly who I am — one with the people. The album is exactly that too: the story of every Pasha I know.”

The album’s final four tracks – “Pasha Bhai,” “Cashcashcashskit,” “Wanandaf” (named after the crew he co-founded with seasoned hip-hop artist Smokey The Ghost) and “Firaun Ka Chiccha Outro” – explores Pasha Bhai’s journey to reconciliation, openness and wonder for the possibilities of human connection and his appreciation for the city. Using traditional Dalit instruments like the percussive tamte, the album transition into more upbeat domain. Demix says, “When people pass away, in our culture, we don’t mourn but celebrate their passing, for we believe its ascension to a higher plane. It is also an acknowledgment that one day, we must also meet them there.”

Pasha Bhai’s album, ultimately, presents the listener with a multitude of reflections and questions — about society, about an individual’s place in the world, about injustice and about morality. All of it makes Neelsandar a microcosm, one that listeners will be privileged to explore on Bangalore Ka Potta.

Listen to ‘Bangalore Ka Potta’ below.