This year the theme of the World Water Day is ‘Wastewater’. As the world gears up to celebrate the day on Wednesday, the number of places struggling without fresh water is on the rise. Keeping in mind the need of the hour, musician Sheik Ellahi has come up with a single song video. Sheik, who has composed music for the movie Apothecary, says, “The name of the album is Choodu. What we have highlighted is the tragedy that strikes us all through drought.”
Sheik goes onto say, “We can experience the change in climatic conditions here. There is an evident struggle for water and lack of proper rainfall as a result of global warming has affected us badly. Our focus is on how the situation has affected our lifestyle and the horrifying after-effects of that.” Revealing more on the video, Sheik says, “A farmer is seen travelling with a unique temperature measuring instrument. It is a glass bottle filled with sand and water. By evening, the water is completely dried and the sand cracked.
So the video begins with us showing many such bottles from 1965 to 2005 —each symbolically shows the dropping water levels. The last bottle shows water levels from the end of 2016, a year that marked a peak in heat wave like never before.” The idea behind the song is Sheik’s. “I am basically a musician who started off with Bollywood film Fun aur Masti. My song was sung by Sunidhi Chauhan and I worked on the background score. Although I have been a part of other projects, my big break was Suresh Gopi-starrer Apothecary. I am currently working on the multilingual Anupriya.” Najim Arshad has lent his voice for the song Choodu, which is released in connection with the World Water Day. The song is also planned for release in Hindi and Tamil.
