Tod Fod is a Gujarati/Hindi rapper from Mumbai and has lived his whole life in Naigoan in Dadar and grew up on a steady diet of old Bollywood songs, bhajans and bhim geet. “I spent my childhood renting a cycle at four rupees an hour and just riding around.”

His introduction to rap came through watching videos on Vh1, but his true education began when he met MC Mawali and the Swadesi crew a couple of years ago. They spent time hanging out in the jungle (at Aarey Colony), talking about music, India’s history, Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekar Azad and Rajeev Dixit. He got involved and engaged in conversations about politics and society that he did not care about before. “When I was 15, my friends and I used to go to the political morchas because they used to pay me Rs. 100 and lunch. I didn’t give a dam about politics but it’s just hustling,” he says.

It was his crew that inspired him to start rapping in his mother tongue. “I studied at St Paul’s High School, a convent so I’m not fluent in Gujarati. I don’t even know how to read or write, but I’m exploring the language, you know. I’ve got a dictionary, and I’m learning new words and phrases every day,” he says. Language isn’t a barrier to understanding music, and he believes that even people who don’t understand Gujarati connect to his songs. “I love that everyone brings their own slang to their music. It is bantai, bachi, bamai in one place and something else in another, in my neighbourhood it becomes bhau, mitra; but it’s all Mumbai in the end,” he says.

“Saving Aarey is personal for me. We chill there, we write, listen to music, we have a potato barbeque with Maggi masala. The adivasis live there, how can you take it away from them? So, when we go and perform there and sing about the movement, it gives people goosebumps, it lights a fire, it empowers people to stand up for their rights,”