Credit: Special Arrangement
A parody song in Kannada, about a girl moving from a small town to Bengaluru and adapting to a new life, is going viral. ‘Naanu Nandini’ has clocked more than 25 million views in 10 days.
The parody is based on Danish pop band Aqua’s peppy ‘Barbie Girl’ tune and is set to simple words in Kannada, so the makers had a hunch it would do slightly better than the content they usually create.
“We were expecting 2-3 million views. But this has blown up. About 15,000 accounts have made Reels on our parody,” says content creator, comedian and protagonist of the song, Vicky Pedia aka Vikas Sangam. His personal favourites feature a group of girls dancing to ‘Naanu Nandini’ at a playground in Bengaluru, a young sister-brother duo from Dubai singing in their sweet voice, and a Kannadiga living in South Korea, who goes from looking sad to “all pumped up” the moment the track kicks in.
Vikas feels ‘Naanu Nandini’ has caught on because people can relate to their own experiences of moving to Bengaluru. “About 90 per cent of the parody is my life’s story. I shifted to Bengaluru from Chitradurga to study engineering,” he shares.
He describes the subsequent days in the parody as PG-li irtini; IT kelsa maadtini; Oota sari illa andrunu tintini; bandid duddella, maneg kalistini
(I live in a PG accommodation; I work in an IT company; Food is bad but I still eat it; Whatever I earn, I send it home).
Further, we see an autorickshaw driver pursuing Nandini to show around Bengaluru, get her to try a gobi dish, and take her to the movies. Later, Nandini is seen attending a job interview. Having studied in a Kannada medium school, her English is not quite there — it’s actually “butler English”, she admits. But she will try to improve, she promises the prospective employer she is facing.
The idea to create ‘Naanu Nandini’ came to Vikas last month when ‘Barbie’, the film, was all over the news and social media. “But my team and I were busy with other shoots,” says Vikas, explaining why they could not put out the parody sooner.
Vikas and his collaborators Sachit Clare, Amit Chitte and Vivek Pattar got together on September 10, a Sunday, and composed, shot and edited the song all in a day.
When asked about the response offline, Vikas said, “I don’t go out much. But when I went to buy something in my neighbourhood recently, people started calling me ‘Nandini’. Plus, people are dancing to the song at Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations across Karnataka,” he shares.
Look up the song on @vickypedia_007 on Instagram