Hunter's Rhapsody

Time of India

21 hours ago

By: Sooraj
Kerala is humming with disquiet. A heavy fatigue—both political and emotional—settles over the state. Once shaped by sharp ideological clarity, grassroots movements, and impassioned public debates, Kerala now feels adrift.
Governance has become procedural rather than visionary. The ruling Left, once the voice of redistribution, often seems bureaucratic and inert. The Centre feels absent, distant from the state's social dynamics. Meanwhile, the Right gains ground by exploiting identity and anxiety, stoking tensions.
In this context, traditional politics no longer speaks to lived experience. Especially for the youth, disaffection is tangible—it shows in skipped meals, in quiet breakdowns, in the pain of watching parents age as job applications go unanswered.
The disconnect is real, and it has no clear outlet. But out of this silence, a voice has emerged—not from party offices or TV debates, but from music. Vedan, a rapper, is a defining presence at the heart of this.
Born Hirandas Murali, Vedan is not just a rapper—he is a rupture. His presence doesn't offer solutions, but it articulates discomfort. His music reflects the emotional undercurrent of a state that remembers its radical past but struggles to live it.
His voice comes from that aching space where you want to scream, but aren't sure anyone's listening.
'Vedan'—Malayalam for 'hunter'—was a slur hurled at him as a child. He didn't flinch. He claimed it. Like 'Black,' 'queer,' or 'punk,' he turned stigma into statement. He began rapping in his teens, recording on borrowed phones with second-hand mics and first-hand anger. His early verses were raw, unfiltered, and defiantly alive—not art for galleries or playlists, but sonic bruises with dirt under their nails.
What sets Vedan apart is not just what he raps, but how. No Sanskritized high-brow diction, no accented hip-hop posturing. He raps in the cadence of bus stops, corner shops, and student protests. This is the Malayalam of the overworked and overlooked.
Take 'Bhoomi' (Earth), a watershed track now part of Calicut University's MA Malayalam syllabus. From slum to classroom in five years—that's a tectonic shift. In it, he raps:
Ningalude bhoomi njan illatha idathu/ ente bhoomi ithil njan nilkkunnu/ njan maathramayittu (Your land is where I am absent.
Mine is here, where I stand alone.)
No clever wordplay—just a gut-punch. An assertion of presence in the face of erasure.
He doesn't pander to politics, but rebellion trembles through every verse. And people are listening—across caste, religion, gender. One of the most telling images of his impact? Headscarf-wearing Muslim girls lip-syncing his verses on
Instagram
, some with tears, others with clenched fists. They're not chasing trends.
They're hearing themselves in him.
Vedan's sound has evolved from lo-fi raps recorded on borrowed phones to intimate studio sessions, though he resists overproduction. The texture may be cleaner, but the bruise remains visible. He works with minimal gear and tight circles—peers who understand the mood more than the market. Lines arrive on bus rides, mid-argument, or in half-sleep. Lyrics come first, forming in murmurs, keeping with his landscape's vocal culture.
Beats follow, built from familiarity: Crackle of old speakers, hiss of frying oil, street vendor calls, dawn parai drums. His tracks aren't engineered—they're assembled from overlooked fragments.
His music has transitioned alongside the artist. 'Oru Naal' carried urgent rawness—skeletal production, minimal layering, crackling vocal takes with adolescent defiance. Lyrics were emotionally naked, oscillating between rage and hurt, laying bare childhood taunts and alienation without filter.
Newer songs like 'Bhoomi' and 'Urangatte' maintain emotional charge but show restraint and craft. The interiority remains, now textured. Lines are deliberate, structure composed. If 'Oru Naal' was explosion, these are smouldering fires—they wait, build, consider. Personal folds seamlessly into political. The early work bled to be heard; new work demands listening on its terms.
Though rooted in independent scenes, Vedan has crossed into film playback—'Nayattu', 'Padavettu', 'Manjummal Boys', 'All We Imagine As Light'. These choices reflect a certain working-class quality, extending his worldview rather than betraying it. He samples Michael Kiwanuka and shouts out
Kalabhavan Mani
, remaining fluid in counter-space tastes.
The state now listens—inviting him to panels, reframing his work as cultural capital. But Vedan refuses clean institutional folding. His music still snarls, still scratches.
His aesthetic—black outfits, handmade accessories drawing from tribal memory, revolutionary stubble—channels outlaw energy. It's ancestral armour, not fashion. He moves parallel to MC Kash, Arivu, chroniclers carving sound into space, invoking unease, demanding listening that feels before it agrees.
But Vedan is no unblemished icon. In 2023, allegations of sexual assault surfaced, shaking his standing in the arts scene.
The response was complex—neither full cancellation nor blind defence. It forced uncomfortable but necessary conversations about power, gender, and accountability in alternative spaces.
There's also his performance style—chest-forward, aggressive—a wounded pride that sometimes mirrors the very machismo he critiques.
While this posture resonates with the disempowered, it also risks reproducing dominant tropes, raising questions about who gets to embody vulnerability in protest aesthetics. Then came the cannabis possession charge, just weeks after an anti-state track dropped. Whether coincidence or crackdown, the optics were clear: Speak too loudly, and the state will listen for reasons to silence you.
His clothes and pendants became 'evidence' of deviance.
But Vedan isn't disappearing. If anything, these moments sharpen the image. To write about Vedan is not to document a musician. It's to mark a moment—a fracture. He exists in the hollow created by political disappointment, cultural fatigue, and a longing to scream when no one seems to listen.
The writer is a Young India Fellow at Ashoka University and a visiting artist with Adishakti Theatre, working at the intersection of multidisciplinary performance, pedagogy, and culture