Why should I have to make all the effort to look secular?: Aamir Aziz
(WorldNews Music)

Rumour has it that after the 2008 Batla House encounter, whenever you heard an echo during a phone call, it meant the device was under surveillance. For Muslims in and around Delhi, the encounter was the catalyst for a nightmare that continues even today. `The fear was very centralised,` recalls `Achhe Din Blues´ singer Aamir Aziz, who at the time was a civil engineering student at Jamia Millia Islamia and living in Jamia Nagar. `The fear of being portrayed as a terrorist was genuine for every young Muslim.` Even worse, he says, was the terror of simply being shot on sight; or murdered in an encounter. A decade later, that fear and paranoia have taken on artistic dimensions for the...