Get a bang out of Bangalore

Here I present, to my esteemed readers, a write-up on my adventures at my recent Bangalore trip.

For all those morons who haven’t the slightest idea why I ventured into such a morose place, please peep into this site. I strongly suggest you take a look at the trailer in ‘The making’ section. I have no idea which champion of Idiots talked Rahman into choosing Bangalore as the only site in India where he can have a concert. I’d like to send him a sandalwood coffin. Anyway, I get an opportunity to explore a new city, to understand the woes of its people, to spend a weekend and suffer what the people of the city have to go through day in and day out.

The picture of Bangalore I had in my mind is of a laid-back city built for retired army personnel with enough parks to keep their interests high when taking their morning and evening walk. An apt example when you describe how images are distorted with ageing.

Bangalore now happens to be a congested slum of glass buildings housing the richest of morons in India. Roads as narrow as the little streets of Hyderabad, but boasts of an opulent set of classy stores. Yet, from nowhere, traffic sense still canes people to order and the police is regarded with awe and dread. Resultantly, even the worst of roads allows for a smooth flow of traffic.

Sitting in an auto, you’d love to give anything to anyone who can tell you where the auto is going. But you end up giving everything to the autowallah once you reach your destination. Autowallahs don’t have mansions in Bangalore. They prefer having farm-houses in Switzerland instead. The software professionals of Bangalore relish feeding the autowallahs with whatever peanuts they earn, and the autowallahs make a major fortune out of it. I can bet every penny

If you ask me to choose between breathing in exhaust smoke and tobacco smoke, I’d definitely choose the exhaust. But unfortunately, I see the necessity to add a rider. “Applicable only in Hyderabad”. That’s because the exhaust of Bangalore kept giving me headaches. There’s something in the fuel that they use there that makes the vehicles, especially autos, more noisy and more smoky. The smoke makes you sulk, weep, yelp and cry out till people take you for mad.

People talk high about the climate of Bangalore. Maybe there’s some truth in that story. The weather was pretty welcoming when I stepped out of my Volvo. But as the day rolled on, things got hot and sultry. Sultry means just one mean thing. Rain just when you don’t want it.

The concert was at the Palace Grounds. I never got to see any palace, but this was a flat, huge ground. After we entered our Rs.500 ticket area, we could see the stage around half-a-kilometer away. I could see the stage, I couldn’t make out any more details. The show was supposed to start at 6:30pm. We reached there at around 5pm and waited patiently. Crowd slowly started trickling in. The clouds started to collect and they thundered greetings among themselves and waited for the right time.

At 6:15pm, the clouds got a signal that preparations are on to set the stage on fire and as a preventive action, opened up the hose-pipes and drenched the stage and the spectators. The rain stopped in 10 minutes. At around 6:35pm, there was an announcement saying that the show will start at 7pm.

Now, at around 6:50pm, the second spell set in. It drenched the spectators who managed to stay dry in the first spell, and soaked the rest of the spectators, down to the core (you know what I mean).

After 10 minutes of rain, a bit of silence prevailed. Then, a local singer sang out a very moving prayer song. The sky was more than ready to shower a blessing of rain when the song reached its culmination. This was a strong spell and spelled disaster.

After the rain stopped, Sivamani tried to keep the spectator’s spirits up. But unfortunately, he couldn’t elevate his own spirits. Then Kailash Kher tried his “Allah ke Bande”, but that didn’t help either.

Rahman spoke next. He said that a rain in the Ramzan evening is a blessing and that it would wash away all sins. The music that comes out of the heart of a singer after getting drenched in such a rain would be of the highest purity that it would touch every one’s heart in this world. He asked for some more time and disappeared.

It rained and it stopped. It rained harder when the organizers try to revive the stage and it stopped when they stop. This went on till around 8:15pm.

It stopped raining after that. At around 8:30pm the participants came out and started setting their things up and the performance began.

There’s nothing much to talk about the way the songs were sung or the way the instruments were played or whatever, since this is not something that can be written. All I can say is that it just makes you feel you’re the luckiest person in the world. This feeling is hard to get. Neither meditation, nor worship nor sex nor food nor success can give you such a feeling. The only little nagging feeling I had was that I wasn’t able to make out much of what was happening on stage.

It then happened that the gates to the costlier bays were opened. This was because the rains had dispersed part of the crowd, and now this thin stadium was thinly populated. We slowly moved up to the front. The rain had made the soft sand slippery and sticky at the same time, and you ambled along stepping gingerly. We slowly moved up front till we could get to the Rs.10000 ticket area. Here, at about 50 feet from the center of the stage, you have a control center, where they monitor the lighting, special effects and sound. There were big boxes in which they had brought in their equipment. These boxes were arranged one above the other on a high-set bench. I slowly stepped on to the bench, climbed onto the harded boxes, and stood up from there. From here, I got the occasional view of the stage. I enjoyed more music and relished the occasional chance of seeing the performers. The problem was that there were people in front, and I was generally able to see only the backs of those morons most of the time.

After some more time, I began to gather guts to climb further and to get a clear view of the entire stage from on top of the heads of people in front. I got a chance to sit on a soft box, which was almost collapsing. So, I put half of my weight on it, and supported the other half dangling from the steel frame that held the asbestos sheet to shelter to the controllers and their equipment.

Now, every note of sound was complemented by an unobstructed view of the entire stage and that was bliss.

Time flew by. I was in utopia. It was almost 12:30am when Rahan started to conclude by singing his “Maa Tujhe Salam”. As Rahman’s voice explored higher pitches taking the swaying crowd along, as if in a movie, it started pouring down again.

Rahman felt that this was a miracle, and asked us to find our ways home in the rain while he was escorted into his car that will take him safely to his hotel room.

We somehow reached home. The travails and tribulations we faced at this point of time are truly beyond my vocabulary. All I can say is that I lived to tell the tale.

As one of the friends who accompanied me rightly said, if ever I write my autobiography, this will certainly figure in it. It leaves such an indelible mark in your heart, that anytime in the future you think of Rahman, the experience at this concert strikes you like a nostalgic bomb.

This post is definitely a cribber. I promise you I'll avoid cribbing in the near future.