As Bollywood voices come together, residents want Punjabi singers to follow suit

Gurvinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, June 29

“Tik, tik, tik” — a video on beating plastic pollution, featuring Bollywood singers, is going viral and is becoming popular among residents in the city as well. 

The catchy song starts with the line “Tik, tik, tik, tik, kasam ye khare…plastic tik na paye re”. 

The video track features several Bollywood singers, including Sonu Nigam, Shaan, Sunidhi Chauhan, Shankar Mahadevan, Neeti Mohan, Shekhar Rijviani, Kanika Kapoor, Armaan Malik, Swanad Kirkire, singer-choreographer Shiamak as well as singer-actor Aayushman Khurana. 

It has several messages in the video including — ‘Between 500 billion and one trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year’, ‘one plastic bag takes 500 years to degrade’, ‘say no to plastic bags’, adding that if people don’t do anything to curb the menace of plastic pollution, then the ‘ticking bomb will eventually blast’ and the ‘poison’ of pollution will spread ‘into every vein of nature’. We all have become ‘slaves’ of pollution and we must take a ‘vow’ to not allow plastic to remain here any longer, it adds. ‘We need to say bye-bye to single-use plastic’, goes the lyrics. 

Several residents have hailed the song and believe that apart from being catchy, it has a very important message to tell. They want singers from the state to come up with such a song in Punjabi to help bring a change in the mindset of people. 

Jaspreet Singh, father of Agamvir, who played a protagonist in the short film ‘The Little Gardener’, said the song was already becoming popular with people including children as well. 

“After listening to the song, my son Agamvir insisted that he should go and take a cloth bag from home instead of bringing grocery in a plastic bag,” he said. 

“In our society, it is difficult to enforce such laws of banning plastic, unless there is a change in the mindset at people’s level and such videos can help in achieving that,” he said. 

“Instead of singing about drugs and weapons, popular singers of Punjab should come together on one platform to give such message to people of Punjab in their own language,” he said. 

Ravneet Singh of EcoSikh said it was time that celebrity singers and actors of Punjab start moulding the mindset to make environmental conservation and fighting pollution a movement in Punjab.