You’re alright with being seen with an elderly man in shorts,” asked Susmit Bose when I met him at his Munirka residence. I assured him that his choice of clothing didn’t matter at all and we set off to JNU for our “walk”, an exercise I needed more than him. Bose, 57, is an urban folk singer and does not have metalheads and goth troops amongst his fan following. But if you’re slightly familiar with the human rights movement in Delhi, you ought to know his name.

Bose released his latest album Be the Change in March this year and is constantly “taking a stand” on issues close to his conscience. Son of maestro Sunil Bose, he picked up the guitar in the early ’70s and instead of following in his father’s footsteps, Bose Junior hummed Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger songs. It wasn’t before long that he penned his first song, Talking Contradictions and there was no looking back.

“The personal has got to be political,” he says, as we walk past SFI and AISA posters plastered on the walls of a bus-stand. We walk closer to take a look, there’s a poster of the Virgin girl with a “Call Me T-shirt”, advertising Virgin Mobile’s unique scheme where one earns airtime money for receiving calls, there’s another one of Uncle Sam demanding CAT applicants. “This is supposed to be a politically aware, gender sensitised campus, but nobody seems to have found these posters objectionable. Moreover, there are no posters that talk of any of the issues that have shaken the conscience of this country in the past few months,” says Bose disappointedly.

Bose has recently written a song about the violence in Nandigram and another to show his solidarity for

Dr Binayak Sen, the public health practitioner who has been detained for allegedly violating the provisions of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 (CSPSA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 in May 2007.

“I’ve been told that I have no idea about what I am writing about. I don’t mind such comments, there should always be room for discussion and dissent. But not for the sake of it, but because there is the possibility of an outcome that will affect us all,” says Bose.

Bose has recorded the songs and uploaded rough, uncut videos on YouTube. “They’ve become very popular. I’ve never been tech-savvy but YouTube is a brilliant invention. I can’t believe the number of people I have been able to reach with my music,” says Bose happily.

His current project is keeping him on his toes. Bose is working with Baul singers and musicians on an experimental CD that has been commissioned by the Ford Foundation. “They felt there was a lot of similarity between my contemporary style of urban folk music and the 16th century traditional genre of the Baul. Both genres deal with social issues but the challenge is to transcreate the lyrics to suit the English language. Rural Bengali is far more poetic and the songs are about very simple ideas but with such meaning and purpose,” says Bose.