On a shuttle ride along the streets of Lombok Island, Indonesia, a group of travellers were sheltered away from the intermittent rains and watched the traffic lurch forward, inch by inch. Most people would scroll infinitely through social media, chat with the person next to them or even catch a quick nap.
But this group? They broke out into a game of Antakshari, of course… and Delhi-based vlogger Antarik Anwesan, camera at the ready, filmed a small portion of it and uploaded it to his YouTube channel, which has close to 9,000 subscribers. A peek at his channel reveals unusual adventures such as playing Holi in Spiti at 14,500 feet above sea level, drinking horse milk and being stuck in a landslide in Kinnapur.
The video has just crossed 250 views and has been received well for its underlying message of embracing different languages and making it a fun process especially while travelling.
In the video, there are two teams with the Indonesian group comprising the folks over at Indonesian Tourism. “We didn’t know what the other team were singing and vice versa,” chuckles Antarik, “but that’s actually what made it fun. We later found out that they were restricted in the number of songs they could sing, whereas we have a vast catalogue of music.” Songs included were ‘Nindiya Se Jaagi Bahaar’ from the 1983 film Hero , and ‘Kya Hua Tera Wada’ from Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin in 1977.
Antarik’s major takeaway from the experience has to be the remarkable similarities between Sanskrit and Indonesian. And despite cross-lingual Antakshari being a fun concept, he does not believe it can be easily adapted everywhere because it is difficult to execute given the phonetics-reliant core of the game.
As a cheeky add-in, Antarik asks YouTube and record labels to not get the video to be struck down by copyright or demonetisation orders.
