The Aural World of Nasir: Sound, Ritual and Identity

Screened at the PK Rosy Film Festival 2025 as a part of the Vaanam Art Festival, Arun Karthick’s Nasir (2020), an adaptation of Dilip Kumar’s “A Clerk’s Story,” opens with the first ray of light waiting behind the sound of pre-dawn Azaan—the call for prayer that emerges loudly from the Masjid and permeates the still neighbourhood. We are first introduced to a sleeping Nasir under a whirring fan. Nasir’s day launches forth with him waking and duly rolling up the reed mat. He moves on to create a moment of intimacy with his wife, Taj, who stands next to the hearth, chopping onions, not even a metre away from where he was sleeping. We are slowly acquainted with Nasir’s universe when he walks out of his house with a small thooku (stainless steel container with a handle) to the neighbourhood tea shop. The early morning air is thick with devotion—Hindu spiritual numbers spill out from the tea shop’s radio. As tradition has it between shopkeepers and their regulars, no words are exchanged between Nasir and the tea stall owner. Nasir simply hands out the thooku and in exchange, the shopkeeper places a packet of cigarettes over the counter. Nasir then walks back home after sitting at the shop’s bench for a few puffs while the thooku gets filled with hot tea. Once it is filled, he returns home. The choreographed routine of Nasir and his family, which includes his wife, mother and a neurodivergent adolescent, initiates us into their world. In less than a day, in not more than a few tens of kilometres in Coimbatore, Nasir rakes open many myths to reconfirm the dawn of a different time in the country he lives in. 

In Nasir, the sound in the air beneath the voices and actions of the characters in the film—the acoustic landscape—is as important to its storytelling as the plot itself. Nasir needs to be watched and comprehended with special attention to its aural world because its sound sphere is closely interwoven with its screenplay. If we are watching Nasir walk the labyrinthine alleys of the area he lives in, we need to be watchful of its big walls colourfully announcing the dates of an Islamic conference that was either held or to be held, while in the air, a voice magnified by a bullhorn warns Muslims to stick to the self-righteous religious pathways for a promising afterlife. 

Nasir and his family’s day unfolds like a ritualistic procession of tasks, one after the other. His wife and mother scrape the coconuts and chop the onions for their home-run tiffin business in the early morning hours; Nasir runs errands for Taj, plays Ilaiyaraja music on his radio and sips the reheated tea bought from the shop. After this, he heads to take a shower if time permits—given that they have only one shared bathroom, which his neighbour often rushes to occupy—and then he grooms his already thinning patch of beard. Accompanying this rhythm of the everyday is the sound of religion in the name of devotional numbers and sermons that seem to chase the family. They have survived the pursuit of this sonic world by learning to ignore it. These sounds (in the name of gods) are unavoidable: be it when Nasir buys a thooku of milk tea, or when he walks Taj to the bus stand junction to see her off to a family function, or when he goes around the many neighbourhoods of the city—once to deliver lunch at school to the son of his boss, who is cashier in the textile shop, and the other time to a college, to deliver a set of blazers which a few students had ordered at their shop. Walking Taj through the lanes of their low-income neighbourhood, mostly populated by working-class Muslims, it is the sound of reformist Islamic ideals espousing self-righteous ways of living that surrounds them. 

When the Muslim ghetto ends and the city’s downtown begins, the sonic world calls for action against anti-national forces; as part of the Ganesh Chaturthi sermon, the speaker declares Bharat of yore as a pure nation where only saints and pure souls lived and transitions to mention that with the coming of foreign forces, Bharat had become "contaminated.” The amplified voice declares that such Asurargal (Ashuras) require a high and immediate priority of weeding out to re-establish the nation’s purity. For an observant eye and trained ears, the treatment of the word 'Ashuras' in a negative connotation brings the contrasted understanding of Ashuras among Hindutva groups against those inspired by the teachings of anti-caste crusaders like Jotirao Phule. In his seminal work Gulamgiri (1873), Phule calls Mahabali, whom Hindu mythology terms Ashura, an icon of egalitarianism. In contrast, the speaker in the film wilfully conflates many themes—Bhakthi (devotion), nationalism and ownership of the soil—to create a polemic that breeds hatred, divisiveness and imagined superiority. The sound sphere that hosts this diatribe feels already full and spaceless. Yet, at the bus stand junction, Nasir and Taj look happy, either unperturbed or accustomed to the hate-filled noise that stands out in that cacophony—we do not know. Visibly bearing marks of their faith on their attire, they continue to walk past the dark pink and bright green colours of Ganesh idols into the bus stand, buy themselves mallipoo (jasmine flowers strung together in a thread for decorating the hair), and go about their day. 

Nasir is a salesman at a textile shop. He is a dreamer and a hard worker. An occasional poet and a music aficionado whose playlists include Ilaiyaraja and Begum Akhtar alike, he is easily lovable. He is playful at times but is a downright idealist when at work. While his colleagues or fellow salespersons seem to be annoyed with the unrealistic demands of their customers, Nasir glides past the indecisiveness of customers without being affected by such human folly. With no flair to entertain those who bring “news,” he is that person with whom gossip dies a natural death. We know this when his young colleague informs the others in the shop about their only female colleague’s new relationship after several failed ones. Nasir cuts the chat short by replying, “That's great news.” A man who wins trust through his actions, his boss’ son and father regard him as their secret keeper. Except for the financial troubles in his life, he looks like a happy camper, breathing in and breathing out words, music and cigarettes. His deep devotion to his wife is clearly evident when he pampers her to the hilt—when he fetches two pails of water in the morning not to merely provide a “helping hand” but as an equal participant in the household’s chores. 

But on that day of his life, on his way back from work, he is attacked by an armed group of angry men—tens of them—and him alone. Killed at night as he walked back home with a plastic bag of two idlis and two dosais. 

Who is Nasir? Why did they do this to him? If his murder is confusing to understand, it is because I forgot to mention the defining part of Nasir’s identity as others see him: Nasir is a Muslim in India. If this killing sounds unpredictable, then we need to backtrack through the film to understand why it is not unexpected. This will be explored in the second part of this essay. 

To learn more about films exploring the experiences of those affected by religious prejudice in India, read Najrin Islam’s essay on Ritesh Sharma’s Jhini Bini Chadariya (2021) and Ankan Kazi’s essay on Shahrukhkhan Chavada’s Kayo Kayo Colour? (2023). Also read Najrin Islam’s conversation with Zishan Latif about his series The Art of Hatred: The Aftermath of North-East Delhi Riots and Ankan Kazi’s reflections on Hum Dekhenge (2022) curated by Aasif Mujtaba and Mohammad Meharban. 

All images are stills from Nasir (2020) by Arun Karthick. Images courtesy of the director.