Over the last few years, the popular underground song – ‘GMD’ has grown very close to my heart. The song hit the sound waves when I was in B-school, and instantly became a national sensation. It was a favourite at booze sessions in my B-school, and in B-schools across India. I could draw parallels between characters and incidents in the song and people around me. Later on, as my friendship with the singer and lyricist of this song grew, it became even more significant to me at an emotional level.
I have been thinking about why GMD struck a chord with us, and continues to be relevant almost six years after its first release. To think of it, the song captures a variety of sentiments. There is the eternity of struggle and resultant despair, there is budding romance, which in this case ends with conclusive betrayal, there is the deceit of the project guide, there is exasperation at not having good enough grades to land a coveted ‘day one’ job, and then the one sentiment that keeps us all going – the hope for a better future, the willingness to fight on in the face of disappointment, and the almost extinct virtue of self depreciation.
The song can be applied not only to events in the life of the b-schooler, but to that of all young executives as well. All of us have dreams. They might not be singular, and we might not be absolutely focused towards actualizing them. We have them nonetheless. Most people around me and my own self specially, will vouch for the fact that life did not exactly pan out the way it should have. We have not blazed the corporate trail spectacularly enough to merit a mention in a business magazine. We have not been able to make as much money as we had planned to. Some of us are not even working in a place we wanted to be, and then some have had heartbreaks and personal disappointments along the way. We might be drowning in a sea of mediocrity, and making random pushes to surge over the surface on a weekly basis, but fact is most of us, are caught in a terrible rut of power points, market work, excel sheets, appraisals and goal setting.
All of this can make one go numb. Some of us have gone numb, and respond to success and setback with equal zeal, or equally absent zeal. Pat on the back, and kick in the butt both evoke nothing beyond cynicism in us. What then, keeps us going? I feel it’s the memory of a time when we were young not only in years, but also in spirit. The constancy of this spirit ended when we passed out of B-school, but flashes of it revisit us every now and then. And what evokes these flashes? It’s the good times. The achievements. The bonding and the stories from an innocent time, where even the most serious of our pranks never aimed at achieving vile ends. GMD is representative of such a time. It prepared us to take disappointments in our stride, and that is what we learnt to do. It urged us to laugh at ourselves. No virtue is greater than that. It inspired us to dream for a better tomorrow. To rebuild and to celebrate reanimation.
GMD, therefore, is our 20s in a capsule. It will continue to be so for 20 somethings across the country for a long time to come. The hallmark of a great song is that it connects with people at various levels. GMD does precisely that. The vocabulary is ours, the experiences are our own, and the emotions are relatable. It’s a complete package. A true masterpiece which brilliantly captures the interdependence between life and music. It deserves respect, it deserves to go viral and it deserves to be celebrated. It is the music of life. Play on..
