What if you are born with brown colour?
Does that mean you are not beautiful?
“Forget snow white, say hello to chocolate brown
I'll write my own fairy tales” - Aranya Johar.
The aforesaid lines are from the first viral video from the YouTube channel named UnErase Poetry. The story of the brains behind the channel is engrossing. He introduces himself as an another guinea pig of the messed-up Indian education.
Simar Singh, a 17-year-old, is the creator of this channel. He is an avid short filmmaker who directed 10 short films within two years and collaborated with others in his field on over 20 five projects. He has been performing at the theatre since age three and was passionate about it.
He has also performed as a standup comedian on his birthday when his friends asked him to do so. Even though it was not a success some of the comics there asked him to perform more. And thus Simar got into standup comedy and he pursued it for a half year.
After a few weeks he accidentally registered for a poetry open mic and there he recited the poems which he wrote from the age of 9. He then attended open mic at Tuning Fork where he did the first piece titled 'Papa'. He was appreciated for his performance and thus he got into it.
It was during his 11th class exams that he got the idea of the UnErase Poetry and he drew his inspiration from a famous American poet Neil Hilborn. Soon, he entered into the venture. He partners with Tuning Fork of Mumbai which provides open mic platforms to poets and they select poets who then perform live.
Tuning Fork organisers arrange feature shows which take place twice a month for one or two hours.
Selected poets are given one-week training and rehearsal. In a feature show there will be performances of more than 6 poets for 10 to 15 minutes where they display their two or three works.
Now this channel has become one of the top YouTube channels in the world.
Currently, it has 564K subscribers and 74 videos.
Swastika Jajoo's “If a Bra Strap could talk," Simar Singh's “The Legal Rapist”, Aranya Johar's “ A Brown girls guide to gender”, and Priya Malik's “Swipe right for choice” are some of the viral videos of this online channel .
The logo of UnErase Poetry says "if you cannot be a poet be a poem".