Red sari at RahmanIshq!

One word of advice from a bruised soul. If you are an ardent admirer of a musician and if his/her concert is announced somewhere in your city, please try and avoid the disillusionment in watching him/her perform on stage. For the sake of your admiration to continue.

I was at the Salt Lake stadium last Tuesday on October 1 to watch one of my favorite composers, A. R. Rahman perform with his team. Names like Sukhwinder and Javed Ali were magnets strong enough to have pulled me in that direction. Plus, I had never been in an open air concert before. If you discount the JU Sanskriti concerts, which had us romping like mad kittens in jeans.

All my concert experience has been a string of closed door affairs inside the Kala Mandir and other indoor auditoriums, with soft seats cushioning my steadfast bulk, while I swayed ever so slightly to the tune played on stage. This, was a different story altogether.

The skies had decided to adopt untimely rain clouds for a week just to humor the monsoon a little longer before the autumn sunshine set in. Blame it all on depression, that affective disorder that often hits me as well. So hard on the insides, that I know it can be a challenge to contain the flow – of Gangetic rains or lachrymal tears.

So what I am saying, it was a rainy evening, and I heard my son ask:
“Maa will they cancel?”
“Na, babu, they have charged 2000 per ticket, so they must have made some arrangements.”

So we set out boldly, me in a red sari, and long danglers, hoping Rahman will spot me in the crowd, and send an appreciative nod floating through the electric air. It never struck me as odd that for an open air concert in pounding rain, plastic overalls could have been a better choice. Again, I blame it on my memory of my mother decking herself up in all her finest fineries for the jalsas and mushairas that my father took her to. Genes, I say they fuck you up, big time!

So as I was saying, we set out, very brave, praying that the rain will stop and the ushers will whisk us off to privileged seats next to the stage. 4000 bucks to me is not a small sum, you see. I told myself that if the richer folks, that is, those who had forked out 5000 for a ticket, are seated in front of us, maybe Rahman would have to crane his head to catch the show of my sparkly danglers. As a back-up plan, I had also stuck a big red bindi on my forehead, as a better landmark to stand me out in a musical mob. It was an unmistakable token of my effort to prepare for the event.

The E M Bypass, the road which takes me from my home to Salt Lake, looked like a snake congested with undigested food. Traffic was a nightmare.

The E.M. Bypass on that day

It took me a minute to realise that everyone in the city was headed for the concert and chances were, we would have to fight our way through to even find a parking spot. Undaunted, and even energized with a mental image of me clutching my son’s arm in one hand, dragging him through the crowd and using my other hand to steer the butt of my umbrella into making an invisible path just to let us pass, I saw myself as a very believable version of Moses merging into Durga. You just had to replace the trident with the pointed umbrella handle in your mind. I am good at making these replacements. In mind.

After an hour of huffing and puffing, venting out an incredible volume of frustrated breath at the lack of infrastructure in my city, the complete incompetence of the traffic police, we reached the nearest point to the venue. They had reserved vehicle parking only for the VIPs. We parked at a darkened spot, straight down the roundabout, closest to Gate no. 1. Jumping out of the car, checking the watch to see if we were late, asking the reps of the West Bengal police umpteen times: “dada kon deeke?" (Which way, bro?), we reached the right gate. Holding the sari pleats in one hand just the right bit away from the spongy mud and brandishing the tickets in another (the umbrella had taken a wet refuge inside my bag, how I wished I had at least one more hand then) we got inside the gate.

Into the stadium I stood aghast! Where were we supposed to sit? There were people sitting on plastic Neelkamal chairs, people standing – inside an iron cage. The cage designated the area for all the two-thousanders!

So this was supposed to be my area of privilege. But where were the chairs? Someone told me, you have got to get your own chair and for a moment I wondered why didn’t I think of getting a few from home?
Picture this, now. Completely devastated with the un-royal treatment despite my pricy tickets, my red silk sari no longer rustling dry due to the mud splattered on the fall of its pleats, my son asking in a small voice: “Maa, where is Rahman?”, with people pushing me aside into an even muddier grass patch, my heels sinking into the slosh, I was ready to cry.

But the spirit prevailed.

I didn’t believe my situation could be as bad and decided that it was all a mistake. I was surely meant to have a seat? A little asking around shattered my optimism and I was convinced that I was no longer the chosen one in Rahman’s land. In the dark, I couldn’t even figure out the stage, which was an aeon away from where I stood. When the lights came on stage I realized I will have to watch the man on the screens they had put up all around.

My boy asked: “Maa, this is like watching the TV in the rain.”

I agreed within but replied: “Imagine your luck, Rahman is standing just a few feet away”. I thanked God that my son hadn’t yet learned the exact measure of those “few feet”!

As we stood watching Rahman sing the first song and say “Nomoshkaar Kolkata, you rock!” I was accosted by two very hormonal teens, who asked me to go and stand at the back, because I was obstructing their view.

Ummm...let me see if I can identify the musicians on stage

I asked for a chair, to that that they said: “Aapni deri kore eschechen, ekhon chair nei, aapnar dosh. Go stand at the back!” (You were late, so there are no chairs, your falult!)

Something inside me snapped. Here I was looking at two budding men, who did not even see that I was standing in the mud with a kid, craning my stub of a neck just to see, who was singing. And here there were two very tall guys, who were shouting at me.

I said: “I am sorry, but I am not leaving.”

To my horror the guys came and stood in front of me, trying to block my view saying: “Dekhi apni ki kore dekhen, apnake dekhte debona” (We’ll see how you watch the show, we won’t let you”).

The thing is, they were so tall that had they just stood behind me, they could have managed the whole show just fine, but they had chairs, that too, on an elevation. All they had to do was bring their chairs to the open space where I was standing. There were ample space to place chairs there, but some people just like to fight for no reason. Instead of dodging, I began clapping my hands to the music. Looking back they realized they had taken on a mighty opponent. So they left. Came back soon with a policewoman, who asked me to sit down. I graciously responded, that I only wanted to sit, but when they had charged 2000 for a ticket, shouldn’t they have at least thought of providing plastic chairs – if not in surplus, but I am sure they had a count of tickets sold?

The officer left without a word. Soon I was joined by many more, who had no option but to stand. I had made up my mind to leave after just one more song, when I noticed someone vacate a chair in front. As I grabbed it, I soon found one more for my son. The guy next to me had a smelly shirt, the guy sitting in front of me was so tall that I had to play hide-and-seek across his head. Vendors kept selling crisps, tea, jhalmuri, adding to the human curtain before me. One chaiwallah stepped on my toes, one snack-seller dropped his damp sack on my lap as if I was sitting there to play catch. Women hooted like owls every time someone even nondescript came on stage. That’s how they greet musicians on stage, maybe. I am old school, and I only clap. Sometimes I forget to applaud. But only when the music has moved me too deep for words.

But we sat through – not because we had to make good use of our money. I heard Rahman go off key in some songs – jarring my ear drums more than once. I saw them playing Rahman videos, which had Aishwarya Rai and Sonam Kapoor looking cute in them. Sukhwinder was possibly too drunk to have given his best. Javed Ali and Harshdeep Kaur were the only ones to strike pleasant notes in the air. It was a very average show.

I hadn’t come for this.

But then Rahman was at the harmonium, playing Khwaja Mere Khwaja from Jodha Akbar and Kun Fayya Kun from Rockstar. I looked around to find everyone singing along.

These are religious Islamic songs and I saw a heavily sindoored Hindu woman singing them with her eyes shut.

Rahman at the piano

And then it hit me.

All these people who were singing along, possibly didn’t realize that they were singing religious chants, swimming with the tide of global music. Rahman is an international figure now, and to me he represented the universal religion of music. Music doesn’t divide between Hindus and Muslims, between Christians and Buddhists.

We fight over chairs, over tickets, over blocking each others’ ways.

I came back sobered. Sometimes you need a blow to your face to change the direction you are looking at. It wasn’t a fantastic concert. I have promised never to attend another in my life, unless I transform overnight into a VIP or can afford a posh seat, where my bindi and my earrings become conspicuous enough to the singing sensations on stage. But I swear I had learnt a lesson once again in humility.

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The finale was well. Dining at Afraa in City Center I, where my red sari, red bindi and my fake diamond danglers could display themselves in full glory. Picture attached below for you:

Yours truly at Afraa, waiting for dinner to be served