Ideamarked Mar2011: Food, Music & Comfort Reading

March seems to have passed even faster than February. I went to Lavasa to cover the Women’s Rally and met a great bunch of women bloggers. Mumbai’s rare winter turned into the hottest summer I’ve seen in this city. I started a style blog (and style section on this blog), got trolled, survived and came back. Say hello to Divadom! I was almost tempted back into the corporate world but survived temptation island with my words intact. Much has happened on the personal front too, upheavals and life-changing experiences which show up, camouflaged as posts. But here’s what gave me respite online this month:

• Food ka Mood, the online food court (link courtesy Anuradha)
• Date a girl who reads: A post so popular, I saw it on email and multiple sites (via Little Miss Dorkette, link courtesy Rehab)
• Rehab wants to be a fallen eyelash (via Outlandish Musings)
• Dischordian gets ready to launch their first album and kicks it off with a free download (via Tweet for a track)
• Music snobbery: The culture caste system (via Chronicles of Dementia)
• BlogAdda ties up with Encyclopedia Britannica to feature Indian bloggers.
• Fifteen of India’s most unhealthy snack-foods: drool-worthy! (via Tehelka, link courtesy Gautam Ghosh)
• This is not the real Will Smith. But he makes it look good anyway! (via Twitter)

Ideamarked! December 2010: Internet Delights, Online Wars, Schooltime Nostalgia, Curd Rice, Romance, Art & Writing

I’ve had a busy December, what with friends from out-of town, the big relationship questions, getting started on the Yahoo! Real Beauty arrangement and a month-long writing exercise (you’ll have to read further to know what!). But I still managed to keep an eye on things of mutual interest, dear reader. *Pause for applause* I’m feeling upbeat and high-spirited this month. So be nice and leave a comment or two telling me what you think and what else you’d like to see.

• This would have been par de course in an 80s Bollywood flick dhak-dhak style! (via AwkwardFamilyPhotos)
• Getting ready for the Kala Ghoda Art Festival 2011.
• This really appeals to the Ideartist in me! (via PS-IMadeThis)
• A month-long writing exercise with a daily prompt (via Reverb10) Hat-tipped by Lakshmi Jagad. Also see my posts on this, here.
• I first heard this song featured on the soundtrack of ’13 Going On 30′ and then fell in love with it. It was the theme song of my journey to the big Three-O and beyond. (Billy Joel’s Vienna Waits For You via YouTube)
• Two drifters off to see the world, there’s so much of world to see. A classic. (Breakfast in Tiffany’s Moon River via YouTube)
• Stoopid copywriters, funny fails! (via Failblog)
• An interesting concept: Turning off your phone as a technological gesture of affection. (via Arzan Wadia)
• Some of us miss the forest for the trees. And then there are those who remind us to stop and pick a fruit and savour it before burning the forest down. (Ashwini Mishra on the small things)
• I came upon this blog from a reader response. It took me back to my early days of blogging when blogs were personal journals (not blossoming ebusiness ideas) and bloggers were ordinary human beings (not the next big Internet celebrity). I particularly liked the idea of this tag (yes, another throwback to those days of yore) and his answers. (via Yuva Anandan)
• I ran into an online war with Bombay Elektrik Projekt after I tweeted that I was disappointed with their Monday Night Slam event. They slammed me on their Facebook page and on Twitter. An account of the event is here.
• I didn’t send this one in but it instantly reminded me of my Best Friend. (via PostSecret)
• An ode to that humble king of South Indian cuisine – thayir sadam (curd rice to you philistines). The article has liberal local references so you’re advised to carry a Tamil-English dictionary. But it is worth a read. Damn, my stomach’s growling. And this after having had a sumptous dinner of the aforementioned thayir sadam!! (via HawkEyeView)
• Remember the teenage sleuthing trio of Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews? My early adolescence was checkered with the adventures of The Three Investigators. Here’s remembering.
• Horsing around (via AwkwardSchoolPictures)
• Things you would never know without the movies (via TheTopSpace)
• “Not email but Facebook may launch its own country by Monday!” (via FakingNews).
• Hardware meets software? The clash of the giants. A good read, even for the techno-greeks. “Apple versus Google” (via IntelligentLife)
• From the idea-archives: My article on learning to cook from the internet, which featured in JetLite’s in-flight magazine in October 2010. Cooking wannabes and seasoned chefs, do take note! (on The Idea-smithy)

If you see yourself (or your site featured here, if you’d like to be or if you’re just intrigued by the Ideamarked posts, do drop into The Idea-smithy Facebook Page and tell me about it. I love company!

I Style!: Rock Chic

It’s been awhile since an I Style! post came up. Have Mumbaikers stopped being adventurous in their apparel? I think it’s got more to do with the fact that I am not on the road every single day, struggling through a workaholic life and thus extra sensitive to a splash of colour or ingenuity.

I’ve been meeting a number of interesting people. One of those wonderfully serendipitous (don’t you love that word, I do!) occasions was when I found myself sitting in *surprise surprise* the quirky Sapna Bhavnani’s house. I used to follow Sapna’s weekly column a few years back. Then I spotted her at a play and blogged about it, saying I wished I’d spoken to her. To my great surprise, she posted a comment saying she wished I had too. Anyway, in a nutshell, Sapna turns out to be warm and no-airs-about-her real, in person. That hasn’t stopped me from oohing and aahing over her quirky, colourful persona, though.

So here she is, featured not as a celebrity but as a regular person (because she is)…Sapna bringing back the I Style!

This picture was taken at the NH7 festival held in Pune in the first week of December 2010. Sapna was strolling around, shooting pictures of the venue and watching Airport set up. Even in that arty, colourful melee, she stood out. I’ve seen those those boots at an earlier gig and loved them but the place was too dark to shoot. This was a perfect occasion and I thought her dressing really spiced it up too!

Red hair, tattoos, black-and-white poncho, black tunic, orange leggings and THOSE boots! Take a closer look. In my mind, Sapna’s the original Indian rock chick.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~

* Cross-posted to Divadom.

Flying Solo: Airport @ InOrbit Mall

Their practice run inspired this post. And here’s what came out of attending a real gig. Airport played at InOrbit Mall, Malad on 8 May 2010 for the AND-‘Share The Wealth’ initiative for World Fair Trade Day.

This is not a review but what came after the concert. Art is impression and expression both at once. And endless circle of communication. Thank you once again, guys.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

Love. I’ve been thinking about it.

Once, the idea was embedded in a setting of fear. Fear of missing the one, fear of hurting him, fear of being hurt, of losing him, of losing face, losing a dream, of being broken irrevocably by it. Love.

Those fears have ceased. I didn’t get over them. Experiencing something you greatly fear is a settling, if not disappointing experience. Things are rarely as scary as we imagine. Or perhaps we just imagine the worst possible without also imagining healing, recovery and the peace that follows. Yes, we are paralysed by what we imagine until reality sets us free.

There’s a line in ‘Gone With The Wind’ which says it is not good for a woman to lose her fears. I fear (only, heh) that it may be true of me now. So much that seemed too big or mysterious or threatening is commonplace, even mundane now. The horror is gone, the worry dissolved and so is the hope of rescue, the thrill of release. If the purpose of a difficult experience is to harden you, what happens when you don’t need the protection any more? After slaying the dragons, what good are the arrows you’ve collected and the skill you’ve acquired? Redundancies make for heavy company.

An evening of sweet romantic music, about love, under the stars. I enjoyed it alone. I didn’t dream of someone to share it with. I didn’t want to socialize or even talk to anyone new. And when it was over, I walked around a bit with AmZ who’s hobbling about on a sprained ankle. Being with AmZ isn’t socializing. It’s just being.

We chatted of this and that and then we parted ways. There’s an emotion between passion and indifference. It feels like acceptance and yet it’s more. It’s that inability to label a person. Not because ‘it’s complicated’. But because you know they are so much more than who they are with you, larger than what you perceive of them. They are the past you’ve shared and the easy camaraderie that resulted but they are beyond that. It’s not your place to define it, just to be thankful for what you do have and rejoice in all else, even that which you are not given to sharing with them.

As I sit in the food court of the mall later, writing this, a kid walks by, his face messy with the icecream that his nose is buried in. And it occurs to me, that this child and every other running about on this crowded Saturday evening…each of them, is here because somewhere sometime two people kissed and made love. There would be the loveless unions, of course. But doesn’t it seem like such ‘normal’ everyday instances of life that one is given to noticing in a suburban mall, can only exist in the sharing of everyday lives? Yes. Love is all around me.

Love.
It’s tripping over a fallen poster. It’s fighting over who gets to use the toilet first.
It’s explaining that the traffic is hell and that parking is a nightmare. It’s scowling and asking the waiter to come back after 10 minutes when its companion has arrived.
It’s fighting and making up. It’s fighting and staying angry.
It’s writing and singing love songs in public.
It’s blushing and frowning, both at once.
It’s staring up at the stars enjoying itself. It’s lovely.

Thank you for the ride, Airport. Abhi to seekha hain, indeed. The best is already here and there’s more to come.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

Airport‘s songs are Hindi and of the sweet, balladic variety. They sound really good in the open air. Sultry weather notwithstanding, the mood suits their music. I’m not sure I have a favorite yet but I’m leaning towards ‘Seher‘ with a ear cocked in the direction of ‘Abhi toh‘.

If you like this post, drop into Airport‘s MySpace page to sample their music. Updates on their future gigs are posted on their Facebook page. Airport is Arijit Datta, Vinay Lobo, Sidd Coutto and Amit Ahuja. Sapna Bhavnani (of Mad O’ Wot fame) supports them. Now, I do too.

The Girl At The Bus-Stop

I particularly remember the details of a particular journey. It stands out in the multitude of other daily routes and frequent destinations that would checker the rest of my working life.

I used to take an AC bus to work each morning where I was spared of the usual Mumbai crowd. My favorite seat was the last one from the back, on the right side. Its window was not interrupted by a frame, the seat itself didn’t lend itself to additional bumpiness on account of being situated over a tyre and it was far enough from the initial seats which would get taken by the occasional non-regulars.

These were my early days of employment and all I had was a battered Walkman to keep me company. In fact on most days, I didn’t even carry a cassette, choosing to listen to the radio instead. Yes, I didn’t even have a phone with a radio on it.

Once I sat down and bought my ticket, I’d settle my handbag to a corner, arrange my Walkman on my lap, adjust the blinds just the way I wanted and close my eyes. The music and the motion lulled me into a gentle semi-slumber, of the sort that I, like most other Mumbai commuters would perfect over the next few years as a substitute to the regular sleep we missed. Exactly three stops (and 7 minutes) away from my destination, my eyes would fly open and I’d awaken fully refreshed. Just in time to switch off and pack away my Walkman, gulp down my entire waterbottle, tidy up my appearance and make my way to the door. The routine never varied.

On one particular day, I couldn’t sleep. Traffic jams and the ensuing horns blaring, even if they were much filtered by the capsule I was in, kept me awake and irritable. And then we passed one of the bus-stops on the way and my head jerked around, almost 360 degrees. At the bus-stop across the road, I caught a passing glimpse of a tall, slim girl with long hair in a ponytail, clad in a bright red top of some sort and jeans. I absorbed all of this without fully realizing why I had turned. It took me a few minutes to piece together with memory before coherence happened.

The ex- had spent much of our time together, playing mind-games and one of his early techniques was ‘My ex-girlfriend was hotter than you, thinner than you, smarter than you, better than you’. It was the most torturous routine I have ever been subjected to and its memory lingered on far beyond the death of that relationship. For every minute in that relationship and a long, painful time after that, I felt ugly, undesirable, unimportant, unintelligent and unlovable. Inadequate. I had never met her and she made me feel terrible about myself.

I struggled to make my peace with my past for a long time after. But I found I couldn’t stop obsessing over what I had heard about this girl. I even tried to get in touch with her, tried calling her just to be able to hear her voice. I wanted to hear a lisp in her speech, one mispronunciation or perhaps spot just one single mole on her face. Anything at all to let me know that she was not perfect. It haunted me for a long time.

All of these memories came flooding back. One time, when we drove past this bus-stop on his bike, he had whipped around and with a practiced solemnity declared that he thought he had seen the love of his life standing there. He refused to turn back or say anything more and after all this while, I suspect it was no more than a ploy to keep me troubled and under his control. Yet, I succumbed to every one of his ploys and tossed about in the black sea of self-loathing and worry.

The girl I had spotted fitted his description to some extent. What was she doing in Mumbai? Was she still living with her aunt as he had claimed? I sank back in my seat, the flood of unwelcome memories overwhelming me. And suddenly I just felt very tired. Very, very tired of hurting so much.

I closed my eyes in despair.

And that’s when I was suddenly conscious of the sound in my ears. The radio had been playing all along, only I had been too caught up in the moment to notice. And the words I heard as clearly as if someone was telling me gently, very gently,

Jin zakhmon ko waqt bhar chala hain, tum kyon unhe chede jaa rahe ho?

(The wounds that time had undertaken to heal, why pick at, all over again?)

When I finally opened my eyes, I realized that it could not have been the same girl. Or perhaps it was. Either way, it did not matter.

In the past two decades, I’ve had a troubled relationship with faith and God. There have been turbulent storms that have broken my belief. And then there have been islands of reprieve such as this one. I have no other name for them.

The hurting didn’t stop immediately. But at least I stopped continuing to hurt myself. I think I just needed someone – something – to let me know that it was okay to stop punishing myself. I made my peace with it at one level back then. But closure happens in stages, little by little every minute, some visible, some not so much.

Some time ago I thought of her again and made contact. She didn’t reply. And it occurred to me that if I had been in her place and received such a letter from a stranger, I would have responded out of empathy or at very least, pity. I know I would have because I already have, in another case. She didn’t and I think that makes me a better person than her. It may be very weak, it may just be rationalization but for what it’s worth it makes me feel better.

In a life starved of belief, when you’re being tossed about in confusion, you grab onto whatever you find and hold on for dear life. Sometimes even a stray line from a song will do.

Tiny Tales: The Winning Point

Vineet was an ordinary young man with one remarkable talent that came to fore only in his late teens in college. It all started with an inter-collegiate festival.

His college and the hosting campus had a long running feud and the annual festival was both, a new episode in the war as well as a chance for each batch to showcase its coming-of-age skills. When Anveeta, the cultural secretary had called for participants, he had been standing nearby, waiting for her to finish so he could leave the class. But she turned to him and snapped,

“Name?”

and his mind had gone on auto-pilot. Before he realized it, she had written it down and moved on to the next person. He didn’t even have time to tell her that he wasn’t into anything remotely cultural. Anyway, he wouldn’t have. Anveeta was not the kind of person one ever said no to. Not that she had ever asked him anything. Anveeta went with the power pack in college and he doubted that she’d recognize him on the road if they passed. Now that they had spoken, he realized that he would have agreed to anything she asked. Even though she had not really asked.

The festival had twenty-five events with about twelve colleges competing for the trophy. Each event awarded a point apiece for participation and more for clearing each level of the competition. The college with the highest total at the end of the festival would win the shining silver cup.

A bunch of 15-odd people were going to sing, dance, act, talk and strut down the stage for the various events. Vineet found himself herded in with the numbers to grab the participation points. These were the small runs, the ‘singles’ as his buddies on the cricket team called it. First to go were the accomplished artists into the music, elocution and art events. Next were the trained and rehearsed teams – the fashion show troupe, the debating team and the dramatics group. The sports teams had gone straight to the grounds and would catch up with them only at the end of the day.

That left four of them. One of them headed to the advertising contest, having set his sights on an internship at an ad agency that summer. The other two trouped off to the personality contest, more to ogle the participants of the opposite sex than anything else. They left Vineet standing in front of the schedule board.

What could he do? He ran his eye speculatively down the list some three times before he found an event right at the bottom. There were only 3 registrants so far and it sounded easy. So he signed up and walked towards the door he was directed to. To his dismay, it turned out to be a small sized auditorium rather than a classroom. What’s more, it was almost half full. Most of the students were using it as a resting point to lounge in the airconditioning, secure in the knowledge that the peons wouldn’t be able to evict anyone on this day of the festival when it wasn’t clear who was a visitor and who, a student.

It was too late to turn back since the co-ordinator who had registered his name was jostling him from the back. Too bad she was so pretty. She was the only girl to have even looked at him that day. So he took a deep breath and walked up to the raised podium and sat down with the other three participants.

It was two hours before he was able to escape from that room. Outside, his team was waiting, Anveeta hopping impatiently from foot to foot as she gave him an annoyed look.

“So how many points do we have so far?”

Each person spoke up their share while she added it to the tally. When the stars were done, she stopped listening and just starting counting off the remaining heads to allot 1 point each for participation.

“14…15…16…17…shit, we’re tying for third place. We’re never going to get there, dammit!”

“No, we’re at 24.”

Vineet ventured timidly

“Hmm?”

she paused in distraction and looked down at her tally again. He waited patiently while she recounted and turned back at him with a frown.

“The tally is correct.”

“No, you only counted 1 for me. I got 8.”

The rest of the group was listening now. Boldened a tad, Vineet raised his voice a notch but he was beaten by the captain’s low octave.

“That’s not possible. You’ve to cross all rounds and win to get that high.”

“Err, yes, I won.”

“What?”

She was looking dumbfounded now.

“Twist-a-tune.”

He heard the girl behind him whisper to her friend,

“What’s that?”

“It’s a music event. They give you two songs. You have to take the words of one and the tune of another and sing them without a break.”

Still dumbfounded. With a supreme act of bravado, Vineet opened his mouth and launched into an encore of his performance.

“Jaadoo teri nazar, khusbhoo tera badan”

It took everyone a few minutes before someone whispered,

“But that’s…that’s…Om Jai Jagadish Hare…the tune is that”

“Tu hain meri kiran”

finished Vineet.

He was rewarded not with applause but with a shriek from the captain herself.

“24 puts us in the lead!!!!”

“Excuse me”

said a voice at his elbow,

“You didn’t tell us your name.”

The pretty girl coordinator from the mini-auditorium was smiling back at him, pad in hand. Vineet grinned. Well, when she asked like that…

And that was the day Vineet went from being an extra participant to a winner.

Dischordian + Gillian Grassi: UTV World Movies and Music @ Cafe Goa

Movies & Music with Bombay Elektrik Projekt

I was at Café Goa this Wednesday (20^th January) for the UTV World Movies & Music event organized by the Bombay Elektrik Projekt. As it was, the trek to Bandra is a formidable thought (and I stop short of saying ‘unrealistic’ since that’s what’s I call travelling to town). In typical Mumbaiker fashion, I aim for efficient usage of time so I clubbed this with another event – meeting a longtime friend/reader of my blog. We decided to skip the movie in favor of coffee & chat and come back for the music performance.

Gillian Grassie

The opening act was by Gillian Grassie, a harpist from Philadelphia on a year-long tour of several countries including India to study the relationships between new technologies and independent music scenes around the globe. I managed to catch only the last few minutes of her act and what little I saw was quite mesmerizing. The harp carries associations of white-clad angels and an otherworldy, semi-religious feel of music. Gillian’s music was none of those things but managed to bring a sweet freshness to instantly hummable tunes. Her fingers seemed to be feather-touching, almost dancing on the strings of the harp (which was almost as big as her..and here I thought the harp would be a much smaller instrument). The harp provided only a very soft background to the songs which primarily rode on her voice. It’s quite impressive to create a song purely from one’s voice, virtually unassisted by the grandeur of an orchestra and Gillian pulled it off, holding the audience spellbound. I do wish I had made it to the venue earlier to catch her entire performance.

The headlining act of the evening was Dischordian, a venture by Garreth D’mello (also of Split). Dischordian is described as ‘an attempt to move away from the wall of sound and aggression and testosterone that makes up most rock music, an attempt to strip music down to its basics’.

Dischordian at Cafe Goa: 20 Jan 2010

Garreth was accompanied by Howard Pereira on his guitar and Agnnelo Picardo (Aggie), the percussionist/trumpeteer. The last began the evening, hugging a trumpet close to his chest while listening to Garreth and Howard spark up the show. I’ve never seen a trumpet that close. The advantage of a place like Café Goa is the proximity it provides between the performer and the audience. So I kept my eyes trained on the trumpet, an instrument I only have vague associations with, of loudness and some sort of stiff-necked wedding band. Thus it came as a pleasant surprise when the trumpet actually made its entry into the music at ‘The Old Whore’. Aggie led it in with the kind of regal dignity and grandeur that you would associate with a quiet, well-built black man who surprises you with jazz. Yes, jazz was unmistakably what I heard in Dischoridian’s sound everytime the trumpet was a part of it.

Garreth himself has tremendous presence on stage. His face is boyish and manner as laidback and easygoing as his Goan roots. But when he begins to sing, those notions melt away as you are carried off in the power and forceful magnetism of his rich voice. It’s a deep voice, the kind that sounds mature and all-knowing with wisdom that comes from having experienced excitement and grown past it. Possibly because of the selection of songs and the jazz feel that I described earlier, it also felt like a strong but gently caress, the sort that can crush but knows how not to.

I’ve heard ‘The Old Whore’ before, live as well as a recording. It has a classic country-western feel to it. Some artists sound much better in person than on the polished finish of a recording and Dischordian is certainly in this category.

‘Scourge of Love‘ revved up the tempo and suddenly the audience was drawn into the performance, before we even knew it, thumping our feet and trying to sing along (or hum along at least). This is when Swati who had accompanied me clapped her hands and called Garreth, India’s answer to Kurt Cobain (which elicited a weak smile from Garreth when I told him later, followed by a hasty retreat).

The piece de resistance of Dischordian‘s performance has to have been ‘Bucket of Blood’ (I actually thought that was ‘Bucket of Love’ when I tweeted about it);-). It’s a racy, foot-thumping number, all adrenalin and blood-rushes. I’ve not seen Garreth in his former avatar but several people I know have given me a pretty graphic account of his rockstar days as a tee-shirt ripping stage-stud, girls screaming et al. His shirt stayed firmly on and he remained seated but this song was a more than adequate hint to those days. And yes, there were a lot of people screaming, even in that tiny room in the café, men and women alike.

Agnnelo Picardo of Dischordian

The trumpet was replaced by a sort of bongo (hand-drum?) for the same song and served to showcase Aggie’s talent. All artists are trying to communicate something in their own ways and media. Musicians face that challenge by appealing to something whose response can’t often be quantified in words – melody, beat, the combination of the various sounds made by wind and strings and voice. Some instruments like the guitar and indeed, the human voice make that connection a lot more easily but it is a greater challenge to connect with the audience with the more distant (but grand) percussion. Aggie displays as much presence as Garreth does, in a different way. As the lead guitarist and vocalist, albeit with his own brand of showmanship, Garreth is the flash-and-dazzle of Dischordian but Aggie makes his presence felt subtly and yet, noticeably. It’s an impressive talent and makes for a great performance.

Garreth solo

Garreth performed solo on ‘One of these days‘ and ‘How I wait”,  which while melodious, didn’t quite send me into rapture like the earlier songs. They could just be the kind of songs you’d prefer to listen to within the intimacy of headphones and in solitude rather than with a big group of people. Fortunately Howard and Aggie returned to perform ‘She lied to me’ and a cover version of Jello Biafra’s ‘Are you drinking with me, Jesus?‘ which really had the crowd howling in appreciation. The other songs they performed were ‘Same old conversations‘, ‘Your Right Heel‘ and ‘Baby, Maybe’.

The performance closed a few minutes after midnight.

The neighbors are complaining. You wouldn’t think an acoustic band could make much noise. But apparently we can.

was Garreth’s wry observation as the audience begged him for an encore.

In sum, the evening was well-spent and totally worth the trip to Bandra. The second half was good but I think the first few songs took away the show. Dischordian is great, live in action and I’ll gladly make the trek again to hear them. I would also like to hear their recorded songs to be able to compare it to their live performance. But my feeling is their real talent lies in the tangible connection they are able to make with their audience when they are right in front of them.

The BEP Movies n Music event at Cafe Goa

* Dischordian is on Facebook and Twitter. The Bombay Elektrik Projekt is on Facebook. My tweets of the event are hashtagged #bep.

Rockstar

I’ve just discovered a kink in my sexual make-up. I have a thing for gender role switching. That’s not men dressing in lingerie (eww, gross!). It’s a woman who’s sexy because she’s wearing a guy’s long tee-shirt that comes down to mid-thigh. It’s the breath-catching oomph of a rolled-up cuff revealing a slender arm. Or ooh…a chunky, sporty man’s watch on a delicate female wrist.

How about the reverse? Hrithik Roshan gliding across an airport, pink tee-shirt, coloured sunglasses glory, the cool criminal in Dhoom 2. Oh he kills me, he kills me.

But the true master, the one that transcends gender, who takes sexuality beyond female or male has to be Sting. A voice that feels like a caress…of a man’s tongue. When he lifts one foot to step forward and a field of golden corn springs up within him, it makes me think…that’s the kind of sex that makes life, it makes you come alive.

How come all the lead guitarists, the famous ones, the images you have of a rockstar…are all male? There’s obviously something vaguely sexy about a guitar. The curvaceous soundbox, the long phallic arm and what about the strumming? I’ve played the guitar and I know it doesn’t have to be held at crotch-level. And yet, why not? It goes from song-making to love-making.

I’d love to be straddling a guitar with my torso, strumming in tune to the master, letting his melody caress my song.

Ooh….

Oh, it’s my phone. That buzz in my pocket feels so good.

Down with flu. Can’t make it to practice today.

AHEMMM.

My mother’s grim throat-clearing conveys that she is very, very angry about my checking my phone in church.

It’s about choir practice.

Her thin-line mouth is a pointed reminder that we are still in church and I’m talking. I drop my gaze and shut up.

Twenty minutes later, I am settled in as comfortably as is possible in the confessional. Why do they make these seats so uncomfortable? Probably to punish the confessors for the sins they confess to.

Yes, my child.

Father, I have sinned.

Tell me about this thing you have done.

It’s not something I did. I’ve been having…wrong thoughts.

Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep brooding silence. Presumably to make me ponder on my wrongdoing. Shame me into confessing all and purging my sins.

The silence is music. The silence is sexy in its own way.

About what, child?

About three notes too low. But low is good. It takes me higher. Go down, down further, go down on me.

I’ve been thinking of quitting the choir.

The silence is different now. Taut tension knife-edge sharp like the orchestra falling away to leave just that one high-pitched note behind.

I want to be in a rock band instead.

CRRRRRASSSSSHHHHHH.

I take a bow.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~

Epilogue: This piece was the result of a writing exercise in a fiction-writing workshop conducted by Manisha Lakhe and Annie Zaidi.

The participants were asked to write down one secret, drop it into a box. These were shuffled and everyone was given an anonymous secret and asked to write something about it.

The secret I received was,

Always dreamed of being a lead guitarist and performing with Sting.

The exercise made me think about the kinds of secrets we keep, the smaller ones that may become life-changing decisions some day…or just stay as that random debris in our minds, occasionally seeping over like the stench of sewage into our dreams.

Vasai Road: Love, Rum & Dancing At The *AlienPhyre Wedding

I’m just home from an amazing weekend. Actually it was only one evening but it packed in so much that it feels like I had an entire weekend.

My friend Reena got married yesterday to her longtime sweetheart Melroy. I met Reena through Adi and bonded with her at The Wall Project. If you visit the Tulsi Pipe Road stretch just to the left of Matunga Road station, you’ll still see our works of art.

Reena’s is the first one after the tree and is very much like her…pretty, graceful and romantic. It says,

You are one big fairytale waiting to happen.

Spitphyre's Fairytale

So Reena’s fairytale did happen this weekend. Yes, I know that sounds corny but who cares? I’m still riding the warm, fuzzy haze that could be partly a result of the copious amounts of rum consumed (plus frenzied dancing and general madcappery) but also the afterglow of an evening and night spent in what now takes top position in my list of places I’d love to live in.

Adi and I spent about an hour battling the traffic to the station from my suburban flat. After that, we wedged into the impossibly crowded train to Vasai Road. A breathless (who’s got the space for lung-expanding breaths?) 45 minutes later, we both managed to disembark, miraculously with all limbs intact. We had to walk out of conjested marketplace but once we got into an autorickshaw, it got much better. The autorickshaws don’t run on meters (a point that both amazed and amused me on my last visit here) but thanks to Samir’s detailed instructions, we knew just where to look and how to proceed with the highly localized process of acquiring transportation.

The auto turned out of the marketplace and rode down a long, clean highway-like stretch of road. Our driver would stop periodically to try and engage a third passenger (similar to buses, these shared autos work on per-passanger-rates) and he only picked up after we agreed to pay a full amount at the end. It was awhile before I took stock of my surroundings and realized that we were cruising through curving bylanes, lined with trees, lush greenery and fields. The feel was very Goa and brought back not-so-distant memories of my great Goa14 vacation in October. Water bodies, small and large dot the landscape of Vasai Road and it seems like everything is next to some sort of Talao.

Reena’s wedding invitation had thoughtfully included a map pointing out landmarks, churches, signals and talaos. Armed with that and Samir’s instructions, it took us all of 15 minutes to come to a stop outside the red-bedecked house (opposite a talao, of course).

She travels all the way from here, each time she meets us?!

I exclaimed to Adi, who replied,

She actually says she lives in Vasai Gaon.

And I could see why she called it that. Vasai Road is a village in so many ways. The cleaner air, the unsophisticated proximity to wild nature, the sprawling spaces and most importantly, the easygoing camaraderie between everyone I met in these few hours…these are things I’ve never experienced in all my years in Mumbai.

This was already 5p.m. and the house was empty. Fortunately we met one of Reena’s family friends walking to church and he offered to take us there. I rather regret to say that I attended Reena and Melroy’s nuptials clad in jeans and sneakers but the alternative would have been to miss the ceremony altogether. We got there just in time to hear some of the mass and the beginning of the rituals.

The St.Francis Xavier Church, Giriz, Vasai Road

The St. Francis Xavier Church is a stately old building, probably one of the big ones in that area. Now having grown up in a Catholic environment myself, I’m fairly familiar with some of the artifacts and nuances of the church. I found it most interesting to see Marathi inscriptions on the walls. The mural right above the pulpit depicts a saint in a pose of imparting wisdom to two people, clad in very Indian-looking costumes. I’ve never seen images of this sort in a church. Reena is an East-Indian after all and is a descendant of the fishing communities that spot the coastline.

I didn’t have a chance to attend her paani ceremony the previous day but from J (also an East-Indian), I know that this is a ritual symbolizing the bride’s family fetching water from the well in pots for her to be washed and readied for her big day. Goans have a ross ceremony the day before the wedding, where the friends and relatives of the soon-to-be-weds are invited to smear their faces with turmeric, milk and afterwards, anything that they have their mind to. It’s a fun occasion as at both houses, the bride and groom are respectively being splashed and smeared with all manner of substances and everyone is having a jolly good laugh at their expense. I think these are very similar to the mehendi and haldi ceremonies that have become the staple of Hindu wedding across the country.

It is interesting to see a blend of the early Christian rituals along with local practices combined together to form the culture of an ethnic group. More personally, from my own childhood growing up a Catholic area and studying with Goans, Mangaloreans and East-Indians, the weekend was a sweet throwback to my memories.

The actual nuptial ceremony was quite short and embedded in a religious mass. After the prayers, the couple were asked to exchange their vows. Adi would keep making me giggle by pointing out that Melroy had asked Reena very politely,

Reena, would you please take this ring as a symbol of…

While Reena’s response had been a more authoritative,

Melroy, TAKE this ring as a symbol of….

Hmm well, bad behaviour from the bride’s friends is probably an artifact of all weddings and we tried our best (our worst!) to live up to that standard.

After the ceremony, we had a short hour to rush back to Reena’s place, get dressed (mercifully NOT in jeans and sneakers) just in time to welcome the newlywed couple back home. A traditional East-Indian soup was served to the two of them (which was probably just as well considering that of all the hogging that happens at a wedding, the bride and groom get very little part of it!).

Chicken Soup For The Wedded Soul

A bus drove us down to the St.Gonsalo Garcia College Grounds, nearly half an hour away. The choice of location was breath-taking. Right next to the old school, the open ground had been carpeted, a podium and tent erected with a stage to one corner for the live band and covered tables set up all around. It was a clear starry night (all visible in the clear Vasai night sky) and a lovely place to have the post-wedding party.

The centerpiece (seen hanging above the wedding cake) was a wedding couple on a motorbike, reading a book together to symbolize Reena and Melroy’s shared love of books. This came to them courtesy the very talented Shawn Lewis who joined us at the party By then Adi and I had managed to catch up with Gursimran, Samir, Apurva and Rehab. We were also joined shortly by Valerie, Shawn and Shailaja to complete the Tweeple contingent at the wedding.

After this point the details start to get a little hazy. This would have been around 8pm and I’m a little unclear about how we managed to pack in such a lot into the next 12 hours.

There was the bridal march culminating in the oranges-and-lemons dance (couples running under the bower formed by other couples holding joint hands in the air). There were all those brilliant fireworks set under the canopy of the nightsky. There was much frenzied dancing. I abandoned my food thrice to jump onto the dancefloor. Uncles, aunties, cousins, friends, classmates, bridesmaids, flower girls and us jived, salsa’ed, hip-hopped and everything in between that could pass for dance.

The bridal bouquet throw is probably one of the most well-known of Christian wedding rituals. But for some reason the garter throw doesn’t get as much attention. In this case though it did. After some blindfolded groping, Melroy managed to get hold of Reena’s garter and tossed it….to a little boy in the audience! Yes, much fun was had.

(l-r) @shadez, @adityab @ideasmithy @alien_kid (Groom), @spitphyre (Bride), @rehabc, @unitechy, @limeice, @fukat

I don’t remember when the music faded from my ears and the laughter stopped ringing. All I know is that apart from the immediate family, we were the last ones to leave the wedding reception. Anand valiantly took on two pillion riders on his scooter while Valerie giggled and hiccupped the girls back in Reena’s car. From there we walked across the road at 3 a.m. in pitch darkness to Anand’s house.

I’m almost embarrassed at what an innate city dweller I am, where dark nights and insects chirping can put fear into me. I clung to Rehab as we picked our way around a talao, across a field and over the path through the trees.

If this had been a Bollywood movie, it would be a horror story. Door kahin jungle mein, kheton ke baad, two pedon ke beech mein se jo raasta nikalta hai…

But we turned the corner and Anand’s house loomed into sight, magestic, comforting and welcoming. What grand houses, the Vasainiwasis live in!!! A two storey building, flanked by a balcony twice the size of my room and surrounded by a yard, facing a talao. This isn’t Mumbai for sure.

We were just starting to rev up for a pajama party with a Calvinball-like game of ‘Skeletons In The Closet’ when voices on the landing told us that we weren’t alone. Another contingent of guests had landed up and decided to park at Anand’s place and have a party on his balcony. A bottle of Old Monk, a guitar and lot of people on the chaddars on the terrace were what kept me up all the way till 7 a.m. We switched the lights off to keep from disturbing Anand’s family (though we barely managed to keep our noise levels down). Anand brought in little candles in porcelain stands as Ryan started to strum the guitar, Munna sang along and Melwyn waxed eloquent to the stars and to the rest of us.

Candlelight, Guitars and Rum under a starry night

It was delicious, listening to live music, laughing and joking with old friends and some new ones, the rum keeping our senses blissfully muted. As the first light of dawn came up over the horizon (by that time none of us could tell which side was East), I hummed the last song of the night…

Here comes the sun..it’s all right.

It described the entire evening, the people I’d met and the place itself. There is such peaceful contentment right there that Mumbai and it’s noisy stress seem like a world away. Due to the greenery and lack of pollution the weather is cooler too and I probably experienced the only winter I’m going to see this year, last night. It’s a deliciously cool place with wonderfully warm people.

With Anand's hospitable family in their lovely house

I was home by noon today, back to my glitzy room in a flashy upmarket address, my cellphone and inbox buzzing with invitations for the evening and the week to come. But none of them match the sweet wholesomeness that I experienced in a few hours. Reena’s family and friends, Anand and his parents who were our gracious hosts through the night all exuded such a cosy sense of warmth. I find that strangely lacking in the vast social circle I have back home here.

There is something about the peaceful serenity that makes it possible for people to open up and share themselves more willingly and truly with each other. I made a lot of new friends last night. Anand’s mother’s bhakri-chai was the most delicious breakfast I’ve ever tasted. In fact I don’t have a drop of a hangover or even a muscle ache despite all the strenuous dancing, the rum drunk or the night spent in the chill air with very little sleep. It might have been the wonderful company. It might have been the special occasion. It might have the lovely place. It might just have been all of that.

It was a special night for Reena and Melroy and somehow that managed to reach out and touch even the lives of those who were only dropping in for a few hours.

Spitphyre + Alien_kid = AlienPhyre!

* On account of their Twitter ids of @spitphyre and @alien_kid.
**Tweets about the event can be viewed under the hashtag of #phyre

Stupid Stupid Stupid – Album Launch Gig

It feels like in this time-starved city, it’s hard enough to fit in one interest (I have two) along with a career, family life, social life and love life. One prioritizes so I picked books & writing while a lot of other wonderful things got left behind. But every now and then you run into one of them and it’s like meeting someone you believed you could be in love with if there had only been the time.

I have never really been a part of the music scene barring the occasional Roger Waters or Mark Knopfler concert (okay, okay Bryan Adams as well…sheesh..). But that’s stuff that EVERYONE in this city does, it’s practically a ritual. But to truly enjoy something, you need to be able to experience as many variations of its existence as possible and not just the well-marketed ones. So I jumped at the opportunity to check into the music scene.

I was at Zenzi Mills last night with Swati and Sumanth for a gig by three bands – The Mavyns, Sridhar/Thayil and Medusa. I was there courtesy my friend AmZ who plays bass with Sridhar/Thayil. The event was to launch Stupid Stupid Stupid, an album compilation of various young and upcoming Indian musicians including the three bands that played. I got there too late for The Mavyns and didn’t catch much of Medusa so I’ll focus on Sridhar/Thayil since I was there through their entire performance.

Amit Ahuja (AmZ)

Last month I was at Airport‘s gig at Il Terrazo, Del Italia and throughly enjoyed myself. AmZ did say that this band’s sound was a little different. Now comparisons may be odious but they form the framework of how we relate to experiences in our mind. I liked Airport‘s songs because they were sweet and easy to relate to. This may have been because they were in Hindi and had a pop-feel to them, with familiar melodies.

Vinay Lobo

Sridhar/Thayil on the other hand, has a very different feel. Jeet Thayil was unavailable so Vinay Lobo (guitarist with Airport) filled in with Amit Ahuja (AmZ) was on the bass. Suman Sridhar, the vocalist makes an art of her performance, using her very expressive eyes and hands. Her girl-woman demeanor adds to her delicate, flute-like voice. The sound was new, the music took awhile to register and I had to concentrate hard to be able to follow the rhythm. When AmZ asked me later what I thought, all I could say was,

Interesting…

which I realised after I said it may not have sounded very complimentary. What I really meant was that I needed time to figure out how I felt about it. I think this is true of all art. There is what you are familiar with and that generally appeals immediately. In music specifically, the language, the accent, instruments, voice intonations are all things that we respond to first out of familiarity and only later from real appreciation. A difference in any of these needs some realignment.

Musicians say that there is music all around us. There certainly is, unless you live inside a vaccuum. There’s cacophony which can become a sort of music once you figure out the rhythm and get used to it. But till that time, it is alien sound. So I guess I was listening to a lot of alien sound yesterday. I did listen to the song on the album again today and it sounds a lot better.

Among last night’s repertoire, I particularly liked ‘The Drowning Song’ (which is incidentally their song on the Stupid Stupid Stupid album). Anushka from Noush Like Sploosh (’3 Act Circus’ on the album) chipped in with her Jewish harp, a curious little instrument that’s barely visible unless you look closely, else it just looks like the musician is strumming her own mouth. The resulting effect was like the sound of raindrops and water splashing. This is a sound I’ve heard before on Indian classical music albums and liked. It’s intensely peaceful and yet powerful at the same time. ‘The Drowning Song’ does overcome you with its watery feel.

Anushka

‘Punk Bhajan’ was another song that caught my attention. As the name suggests, it was a fusion of Indian classical music with a more western sound in the background. This was really the song that told me that Suman’s voice could encompass a broad range of notes as she took the dips and highs of the bhajan smoothly. The only downside for me was that given her high-pitched voice, there were times it came off sounding shrill. Yet, I guess that is the style that she and the band are experimenting with and it was good to see her able to take the notes without slipping off tune.

Suman Sridhar

An important aspect of the entire show was that the venue and sound set up were rather less than acceptable. The gig happened on the upper storey of Zenzi Mills, with a salsa meet in progress on the floor below. If one stood near the door, the strains of salsa were rather louder than the music in the room. Why would you stand near the door, do you wonder? Because up close to the musicians, the sound seemed to be ricocheting off the roof and walls in a funny way. I could hear each piece separately and by the time I put them together in my head, it was too late to enjoy the song. All the songs sounded much better at the back of the room…when you could hear them undiluted by salsa.

Amit, Anushka and Suman preparing for 'The Drowning Song'

I also spotted Dischordion‘s Garreth D’mello. He wasn’t performing but contributes ‘The Old Whore’ to the album. The song has a happy-go-lucky vibe, the title notwithstanding. Incidentally my friends who’ve seen Garreth perform in the past few years describe him as a real rockstar on stage with the whole ripping-teeshirt-off bit. So you can imagine my surprise when I watched him stick to his barstool all through his performance at Blue Frog last year. The sound is easygoing and smooth too, not the gritty screaming you’d expect from a teeshirt-ripper. He sounds good and finally I guess that’s what makes a real rockstar.

On a snide aside, I stepped out for a break and took a walk around the compound. And here’s what I spotted. (For the non-Marathi-reading people, that spells ‘Prog’ not Frog. But it may be argued that Blue Frog is a quirky enough name so a Blue Prog is probably just an extension to that!)

The Blue PROG

On the Stupid Stupid Stupid album that I’ve been listening to all morning, 21 tracks vie for my attention. The Mavyns bring ‘Freedomslinger’ while Medusa does ‘March’. Constellation Project‘s ‘Ring the bell’ is playing right now and it reminds me vaguely of Dido though I know the music sounds entirely different as does the accent. I’m quite liking the whistling interludes in the song. ‘Freedomslinger’ similarly reminds me of The Eagles ‘Get over it’. Khiladi‘s ‘This is Sparta’ starts with the ceremonial Maratha trumpets that sound at the start of any celebration…and transcends into a sort of passionate rap-conversation. It’s fun.

Incidentally, Stupid Ditties 3 is available for download. It is a mixed bag, with different kinds of voices and sounds. I see nothing in common to all of them except that they’re all young and newish. Which suits me fine considering that also describes my foray into music.

These shoes are meant for rocking