As had been become customary for this night of the week, the basement was packed to capacity. So much so that there were people sitting on each other’s laps (yeah, the ones who liked sitting at a table and having a ‘quiet’ drink), while those who were standing wouldn’t find it so hard to imagine their body to be a mere blob in an archipelago of human bodies vying with each other for space. A blob of an island which could be swept off with the approach of the first instance of a high tide – rather, a moshpit. The archipelago of human bodies extends as a chain to outside the entrance, where it takes more than just a knowing look, a wink, or a nudge to the bouncer to gain entrance to the basement. Back downstairs, a band made up of piercings, tattoos, steady stares, taut jugular veins and a cocktail of intoxicants, get on stage. With the first guttural growl that leaves the vocalist, that archipelago of humans moves in unison in the manner of a reaction to a shift in tectonic plates below them. A few blobs are later reported to have been seen erupting to at least a couple of feet high into the choking layers of smoke above the rest.

Elsewhere, there are smooth waves of people wafting through, touching the shore and retreating back into the expanse of their comfort space. There are no piercings or tattoos to be seen here, nor are there any primal grunts or grungy riffs. A lot of hair is on display, more on the chin than the scalp, and the vocalist doesn’t appear quite legible over the concoction of oddball kitschy samples, the glitchy distortion of the bass, echoing synth reverbs and the metronomic tapping of a beer bottle. Not that the vocalist cared either – he probably didn’t care as much even when his original band members kept leaving the stage as musicians from other bands changed duties to continue the jam. A multitude of neon hued geometric shapes casts its shape over the sea of people – a sea, not because of its size, but its characteristic calmness which accompanies the hours between day and night – while ripples of human waves move together and apart in a somewhat disjointed harmonic motion. The only thing that enjoys harmony that evening is the chaos which occupies the sounds that night.

Both the scenarios would be situations any regular on the Delhi gig circuit would be familiar with. Except that the first scenario dates back to some time between 2005 and 2007, while the latter scenario is what can be seen when you cut to 2012. In case you’re wondering about the venues – yes, the basement is the erstwhile Turquoise Cottage (which has since lost its legacy after reopening as the TC catering to drunk off tune karaoke night patrons who also like to sing along to that stuck-on-a-loop CD playing “I Will Survive”, ad nauseam). The latter scenario, on the contrary, is what one would see at The Living Room in the Hauz Khas Village, any night of the week these days when they have live music being played.

So what’s changed between then and now?

Not much, and still a lot.

Typically, for the proliferation of any performance art, there are three categories of venues which act as platforms (and we’re talking of indoor venues – no festivals in stadiums or municipal grounds or amphitheaters). The large, swanky, top-of-the-line club – that of the mega stage and mega spending audience. The pub which opens its doors to any and every musician/band irrespective of the genre of music they belong to – essentially the machinery which churns out the pulp of music being produced everyday. The intimate neighborhood hangout, which while may not be the best setting for live music, allows for experimentations and jams for genesis of newer formats, with a receptive audience. Then there are venues which straddle the lines between these.

Till a few years back, there used to be a handful of venues which would be open to the idea of getting a band to play. Turquoise Cottage quickly built up a reputation for being the Mecca that bands flocked to, so did Mezz and Cafe Morrison which became the playground for hosting moshpits for headbanging metal fans while Haze catered to the somewhat evolved patrons of blues and jazz. Then Turquoise Cottage was forced to close its doors, Mezz had an accident and didn’t recover enough to open its doors fully, and Cafe Morrison gradually waned off from its identity as a live venue. In the lull that followed, there was a gradual growth of venues which sprouted across the Capital, so much so that at this point at least around a dozen or more venues can be considered as ‘active’ live venues.

Blue Frog recently opened its doors for the live music lovers in Delhi. But while such a top notch venue can boast of superior equipment and in-house gear for providing an optimum live experience, naturally it comes with a cost which doesn’t leave them with much leeway in the form of economies for the perennially strapped-for-cash gig regular. The ‘Hard Rock’ Cafe has, since the time it opened in Delhi, seemed like one of the most blasphemous jokes to have been cast on its name – substandard gear, terrible FOH sound, tacky stage lights, and one of the most ‘un’hardrock friendly audiences. Moving below on the pyramid, the ones which host regular gigs range from the friendly neighborhood TLR with an audience most receptive to experimentation, to Out of the Box right next door to them in Hauz Khas Village, to Zook and its dub friendly electronica nights in Saket, to Striker in Gurgaon, to the somewhat upmarket newer spots like Chéri, Circa 1193 and Shroom.

While earlier, it used to be a rarity to have more than one gig happening any given week, these days, one is spoiled for choice deciding between at least three gigs happening each night of the weekend, excluding a few more spread over the remainder of the week. For musicians, this has opened up a much broader avenue for exposure. Things haven’t really looked as bright in the recent past few years. Despite the fact that there are venues which may not have the best acoustics or gear, venues which continue trying to rip off bands by not paying them, and venues which purely treat live music as a means of generating revenue for their outlet. The fact that there are more venues open to the idea of live music is promising, regardless.

All of this sounds good on paper, but a crucial question still remains unanswered.

The audience, and the numbers which come along with it.

More than a couple of good live venues have closed their doors to bands when they realized that, not only were they not making profits, they were actually running into losses on gig nights. Running an establishment is a business, and even if the venue owners have the best intentions at heart to help provide a platform for music, it would be foolish to expect any one to shell money for it from their pockets. Generating revenue at any establishment, like any business, would revolve around either or a combination of two factors – value and volume. Both of which are things, that wouldn’t be unfair to think of as somewhat lacking among the audience we have right now. Actually more on volume than value. There can only be a small cross section of the population which can be expected to pay value all the time, and if there is anything to blame for it, the economy still hasn’t reached a stage where the purchasing power of enough individuals who enjoy live music has grown to the needed level. This is still something that shouldn’t come across as a roadblock for a growth in terms of the numbers that could be counted as part of the regular gig crowd. What can’t be made up in terms of value, can surely be compensated in terms of volume. The question is, have we reached a stage where we can safely believe that a critical mass in terms of volume has been achieved, even if it is just enough to sustain the indie music scene as a subculture alone?

There are the bands. There are the venues. Where are the people?

And if this continues to be the case, 2007 just might have been a better place to be in.

Edit: There have been voices saying it’s about time there is an #OccupyVenues movement. Bring it on!

Rockstars are a dying, if not an already dead, species.

In recent years, Junkyard Groove could be regarded as one of those handful of bands who have largely delivered on the promise which any rock and roll band holds out for the people who clamor to watch them, hang out with them (even if it just means getting to interact with them over social media now) and download their albums to memorize the song lyrics. From winning the Dubai Desert Rock Festival, opening for acts like Iron Maiden, playing along side Incubus, and tasting the pinnacle of success, in true rock and roll style, they went through a bitter breakup (by the public manner in which it got announced over Facebook) with the rest of the band leaving Ameeth behind, who dramatically went ahead to form a fresh lineup continuing with the band’s name, while the rest formed another band. The vitriol continues to flow in the form of taunts and jabs, which was quite visible in a recent radio interview which The Captains of Hook gave out (hear for yourself over here, it’s a fun piece). Ameeth doesn’t seem to care about it either, and has been quite vocal in his feelings about the other band.

That sounds like such a familiar story for anybody who has grown up on a staple diet of the culture and history of rock and roll. Across the world, any band worth it’s salt has over time displayed with an efficient precision their affinity for the execution of the unwritten laws which attract controversy. They’ve always cocked their nose to conformity and held a strong belief in that not only is bad publicity the same as good publicity, but in fact it is better publicity. Even if they didn’t hold that belief true in their conscious mind, the inherent nature of their lives has been such that the sheer simplicity of practicing non-conformance to established norms would lead them to controversy. Whether they wanted it or not, they couldn’t help it. It was their fate, regardless of whether they considered it to be a boon or a curse – just another reality of life.

Not that we haven’t had our fair share of rockstars, specially in the days of yore, when the listeners were few, the musicians fewer and options for playing a gig even fewer. Since then, the population of listeners has gone up, there is a new band which gets formed almost every month (if not earlier) and at any given weekend, you’ll find at least a couple of decent gigs happening in the city. On the surface, these factors seem to have helped bands to a large extent in terms of opening up a wider avenue for them, but they haven’t necessarily translated into the birth of more, or bigger, rockstars of the kind we’d like to see. Musicians are trying to play it way too fuckin’ safe these days.

People follow rock and roll for the style of life it defines. When was the last time you heard of a band member who broke a beer bottle on someone’s head and had a brawl in a bar, ending up being thrown out or being banned from there? Or you got to know sleazy intimate details relating to a band member’s personal life, of a nature which would be considered shockingly scandalous? Terrible thing to ask, but how many band members have had their personal demons driving them enough to push themselves over the edge? A lifestyle textured with the reek of alcohol, the chaos of drugs and the promiscuity of sex doesn’t seem to figure quite high on the minds of bands these days. Let that alone, it is difficult to find bands who would have the capacity of breaking into a verbal diatribe, even while under the influence. And if it exists, it isn’t getting into a state of a comfortable marriage with their musical output or their real life presence in the way it is perceived by people.

Rockstars aren’t meant to just hang the guitar around their neck, play a few (or more chords), belt out some harmonies and choruses, say their goodbyes, and go back home to their families to complete a happy picture of a fulfilled life. Advertising executives, lawyers, doctors, sales guys, accountants and stock brokers are doing a much better job at acting out that role. Rockstars are meant to hold out that promise of a life which a normal person could only think himself capable of dreaming. Rockstars are the ones who are meant to take the fall. They are the ones you would want to hang out with, but not be sure if it would be the best idea to take them home for a family dinner. Definitely not the sort you’d feel comfortable leaving your girlfriend (or boyfriend, for that matter) alone with.

Jarvis Cocker once said, “People who make good music aren’t necessarily nice people”. To add to what he said, it is usually that ones who aren’t as nice, who go on to make their place in history. It’s time enough to have the return of the not so nice ones. Or leave the rockstar to choke a slow death.

so shiv got in touch with me, plus some more of us. and we put this together in a week. the living room in hauz khas village was re-opening after a brief stint of renovations, and it was an excellent option to put up this group exhibition on display over there. absolutely in sync with the indie feel of our work.

drop by. it’s gonna be on for a month at least.

super happy.

Take this from me. If ever there is a day in your life when you might have the slightest possibility of being  cast in the conical embrace of a spotlight and sprinkled with stardust, the dazzle of which could just about take over the glare of a mid day sun (it’s alright, that doesn’t really need to be the exact case, as long as you are delusional enough like me to believe that whatever is happening around you does actually amount to something similar to what I just described), do not, I repeat, do not have your close friends around you. Yes, friends have been known to have the easiest access to cause embarrassing moments in public spaces for friends, but trust me, this could be a smaller concern compared to what I realized.

***

“Yeah, where are you now?”

“Er, where are YOU now?”

“I’m on the metro…”

“Oh, what the fuck!…”

“…and I’ll be at your stop in…wait, you’re STILL home?”

“…weren’t you supposed to tell me when you got free before getting on the metro?”

“Anyway, it’s already past 2pm. Folks have started calling me up for directions to the place and I’m still on the way there.”

“Heading out, see you at the station in a bit.”

So yes, in a way it is my day today. (No, I’m not getting married, in case someone’s imagination thought the trite obvious. But then you wouldn’t have thought that way. You wouldn’t be the sort to be reading this then. And a groom in which world reaches the venue on a metro anyway.). And I was still not at the place I was supposed to be at least three hours ago. Nothing to really worry about, I’ve handled worse and come out of it better off. Some twenty minutes later, the carrier of a grin wide enough to betray the fact that substances affording mind alteration – suitably worn off though they maybe after a good twelve hours of having last encountered them – were possibly still at work in his mind, made his appearance.

Mind alteration substances have a way of perverting reality. Which is what any form of human creativity aspires to do anyway. From the aesthetic finesse ascribed to Music, Art, Literature to the crass debasement that we so easily load up on Mass Media, Dictators, Corporations – they are all figments and results of human – individual or collective – creativity, and each tries to dispel the notion of reality within the world they cohabit with the world they aspire to create. Reality stays the same regardless. Even after taking on a form different from the way you may know it better as. And it continues to stare you in the face.

“Don’t worry, we’ll make it in time for everything and everybody.”

“People have already started reaching there, I told you already”.

“We are rockstars. See, the universe is conspiring to make us reach there late despite our best efforts since last night.”

“(I feel like killing Paolo Coelho for having written that or something similar. And WHY did I read that book? I don’t even remember ever having suffered peer pressure as a teenager either.)”

“Just think of it as Karma.”

“(Karma Police. I could hear Thom Yorke and see that car chasing that guy in the video running in a loop in my head.)”

Half an hour later, and around four hours after our expected time of arrival we reach the venue. Boom, everyone had already put up their stuff on display. The first band was gearing up on the stage.

I was putting up some photographic prints on display today. Big day yeah.

In fact, a series of photographs. A few prints from a larger set. I like to think of them as one of the few pieces of good work I’ve done in the last few months. At least they got me more than a few new followers and retweets on Twitter, and more likes on Facebook than I got on most of the random BS I keep posting. That’s how one starts measuring personal success in the age of Social Media – Followers, Subscribers, Retweets, Shares, Likes. And with rapidly decreasing attention spans, your work stays only as relevant as the last Like or Retweet. After which it gets lost in that cesspool of the Newsfeed or Timeline.

The personal scale of applying critical thought to oneself be damned.

***

“Hey, that’s really awesome work.”

Pretty face. And again, nothing could’ve clung as flatteringly on her as the black she was wearing.

“Oh, thank you. Er, I’m so sorry, but gimme just about ten minutes. Let me just sort this stuff out.”

In retrospect, I have realized that I have a way of acting the asshole for myself as far as my personal interests go when I am faced with that dominating mistress better known as Work. And no, she doesn’t need to seduce me. She’ll tie me up, whip me, flagellate me, gag me, drop a barrel of molten wax on me, and I’ll still just try more to, well, work on her better. Maybe I should rid myself of her kinks once in a while. Vanilla is good too.

“Fuck man, you look fuckin’ dapper. White shirt. Jacket. Super.”

(Not that I didn’t expect such reactions, considering I have cultivated a calculated aversion to formal button down shirts and jackets after leaving the cubicle life, going so far as to flirt with the possibility of arriving for boardroom meetings in slippers, denims and plain old tee, and being successful at it. I did thank myself for not actually have given in to last night’s now-seeming-somewhat-outlandish-idea of putting on a Sherwani.)

“(Oops, there’s another one spending more than half a minute at each photograph. I should reach out to her and be the nice guy and introduce myself.)”

“HEY, so happy for you. Your work really speaks for itself.”

“Thanks man, so happy that you made it. (Er, if you’d excuse me, I think I would want to attend to, oh, she too has disappeared already). Yeah, so how have you been…I’m seeing you after fuckin’ ages, man! Where’s your…oh, you broke up…well, anyway, it’s really nice and sunny today. And the people all around are having so much fun. Glad you are enjoying it too!”

Being a thirty something single guy with premature gray hair is a strange experience. The twenty something girls just glance in your direction, giggle and look away. The forty something women eye you, smack their lips while looking away with the escape of the hint of a smirk. Both end up making you feel either somewhat dirty or guilty or both. Whatever happened to the thirty somethings? Oh well, their babies are keeping them too busy to care.

“(Fuck, I should really stop introspecting so much when in a public space. Now where did that one who found that Old Delhi image rather spectacular in her words, disappear to?)

“Kickass work, dude.” “Bro, you’ve nailed it. So proud of you.”

“(Huh! Nailed it? Who? Oh! I really need some fresh green air.)”

***

(By now I guess you might have figured what I meant by not keeping friends around in a supposed moment of glory.)

***

The music kept getting louder. The bands kept changing. The music was nice. Experimental in some parts, confusing in others. Both ways it brought back my mind to a more familiar space. Familiarity is comfort. But we realize it only after we push ourselves out into the unfamiliar and make the journey back. Maybe we need to push a bit more to make the unfamiliar to be what defines the familiar for us. That just might be a comfortable place to be in. Just might.

***

Somewhere a familiar voice said, “I’m not responsible for anything I do now.”

I stopped taking that responsibility on myself some time back. At least for things that I let others do to me. More than what I do to others. The latter is quite enough.

***

Later that night, I reach home. Not mine.

A little later, I get into bed. Not mine again.

But I went off to sleep in the familiar solitude of my own skin against my mind. I don’t remember any spotlights or stardust when the lights went out before I slept.

Rockstar?! Hah, I should’ve probably picked up the guitar much before I picked up the camera.

***

Most of the stuff you read above is not true. Well some of it is true, and most of it isn’t. Or most of it is true, and some of it isn’t. I just hope you had a good time reading it. Just have a good laugh and forget it. Just like I try to do with most things in life. Don’t forget to tweet or share this post…the image gallery too. You’ll find the pictures if you click right here.

For all those who made it for Dog Day Afternoons on 28th January, and specially all who made it for me and were happy for me, thanks folks. And no, in case what you just read makes you feel otherwise, I do mean it right now. I meant it if I said something similar when I met you there too. 

the sound of laughter was getting progressively louder. a bit more coherent too. a strange place to be in. a place somewhere in between being stoned with amplified auditory senses while losing out on a sense of the coherence of time, and being absolutely straight in the head when everything makes perfect sense, or at least seems to.

life as we see it around ourselves, like the giant wheel rigged right bang in the middle of a carnival. you may confuse the carnival – with its never ending sounds which keep on clamoring for your attention, the masquerades who keep popping up in your face as fish eye lens vignettes, the garish pouts of the burlesque which attempt to seduce you, the imps with that sly glint behind those masks of rheum filled innocence, the elvish banter playing in the dust around – to be life itself. life has an inherent quality of, as they say it, coming full circle. life takes you to highs you wouldn’t have known to have ever existed, views which you could never have realized while in the throes of passion. and then it throws you down too, such that you could feel your guts making their way out of your esophagus, the scarlet of the blood in your face turning to a pale lifeless non-color, but it never drops you down. always leaves you in a limbo inches above where you could smell the muck, falling into which seems so much the easier choice at that time. except that you just need to turn around, look for the lever, and twist it with all your strength to take you up again. it’s a different story that life never tells you to look around for the lever, or where to find it for that matter. the giant wheel it is then which is life, in case you didn’t figure that out by now.

the laughs don’t stop, alongside their interspersion with idle chat, with an idler unspoken conversation deciding upon who goes home with whom. the realization of being non-existent dawns, as is a common place occurrence right on the cusp of the darkest part of night and twilight. some continue to believe it is the feeling of coming alive at this hour which supersedes everything else. the feeling of life. try negating existence at that time. liberation would acquire a meaning in that moment. even as one lies half burnt and stubbed by the sidewalk. of course, we are the ones who light up ourselves at one end and get kicks from the nicotine of emotions and feelings. pleasurable. addictive. cancerous.

the sound of the laughs keep getting feebler as they move away into the distance. the sun is trying to make its way.

the shadows just make themselves longer now.

scott kinsey (tribal tech) may not be that well known a name (i dare say) in this part of the world, barring folks in the music fraternity, or serious aficionados of jazz. those who know him would at least give a nod of approval, (c’mon guys, you should be jumping up and down in approval), if not more, when i say that he is a good ol’ babaji when it comes to the keys. some part of this may have come through in the form of his pedigree, having enjoyed an extremely close and successful working relationship with joe zawinul (weather report? now, ok?), a monk when it came to his work on the keyboards (i say a monk because of the way i’ve seen him in performances and images, scott told me i was wrong in my perception, not on his erudition of course, but his countenance), and who scott had not only as a mentor, but also as a fellow collaborator in music. touring india along with, unarguably, one of the finest jazz percussionists we have around ourselves today, ranjit barot, scott completed the trio along with dominique dipiazza, to deliver a performance which left the audience under a force of magnetism which only allowed limbs to resonate in harmonic motion with the music. while ranjit and scott – being the masters they are – used to lose themselves in another dimension altogether while they played, it was the watchful gaze of dipiazza on the bass guitar which wove both of them together, and ensured they didn’t go too far away making it a point to get them back. and then start all over again. the audience just kept getting lost themselves. i’m still wondering whose watchful gaze bought them back. maybe just the sheer pleasure of a perfect evening set in summer.

incidentally, scott kinsey has toured india in the past – 2007, when he played in calcutta and aizawl.

ranjit barot is slated to perform soon at the escape festival being held in naukuchiatal between 20-22 may (www.escapefestival.in)

some images from that night, more of which maybe viewed here.

oscar never really fit in well. after all, who would have been keen to see a beefed up brawny rock of a boxing champ turn into a wimp while trying to brush aside the twisted dark humor that life had been dishing out to him in recent times. what we usually tend to forget at a time like this is the fact that it is the screenwriter who is to blame for all the shit that we’ve been slipping over while trying to keep a steady pace on the sidewalk, and maybe help some one cross the street once in a while. but yes, you will get run over if you try it now. you most certainly will.

then there are times when he finds himself walking bang in the middle of the road. right in the face of an approaching roadroller moving at the speed of an interstate bus. only he sees it (or thinks he saw it), once it has run him over. there he lay, plastered to the black tarmac with eyes looking up at the sky. no, there is no background soundtrack of chirping birds, nor does he inflate himself free from the road. he just lies there as an ugly sticker getting uglier with each passing tyre mark. some who spot him from a distance make sure they skid their tyres on him – ever tried rubbing anyone the wrong way in an oblique direction? – acts out worse! the sun just kept itself at its blistering shiny noon hour, even though it was way past the time for the moon to have come up to cool the heat off a bit. the sun and moon are one of the best conspirators when the time to set comes. the blisters, in the meantime, just kept bursting themselves raw under the tyres. for the world to see.

oscar’s family was in the mob business. a big family it was. with dirty bigger secrets. but like every good family, the cat was never let out of the bag in the open. it was the dogs in their case here.

oscar was a boxer in his life at some time. a boxer who never lived up to being as wild’e’ as his family name expected out of him. such were the expectations from him when he started entering the ring regularly, that his cousins made him drop the ‘e’ at the end of the family name to give the name a more menacing ring to it. not that he cared much – each time he was thrown against the ropes of the boxing ring, he always got a sharp reminder about the missing e. more like e#, with which he always struggled getting the note right. somehow, he could always get the note right inside his head when he was asleep. drifting in a dream state, he would play continually with utmost abandon in a tone of lament which upon waking up just left him with a dry rasp in the throat and a quizzical headiness about what he was longing for in his dreams. not that he remembered any of his dreams either, being the sort who would just crash out on the bed whenever his body demanded sleep, and sleep he would. deep, undisturbed, maybe not as peaceful, but sleep he would, waking up each morning with a start whenever his body’s alarm went off. each morning bringing with it that same lilting downer sans a cause, which no amount of the opaquest black coffee could get him out of. the black coffee probably also didn’t work because of a lurking fear within of all things black, but out of fear of being what is widely known as ‘politically incorrect‘, he never really expressed his views in public, except that they did become quite evident in his actions, and went to obscene extents at times. the black coffee just made him worse than any of those he thought niggas who may as well have been homies. that was was how the black of the coffee got back at him. maybe obscenity came naturally with his name, which may have been possibly averted had the mother (who had been named dorian, after an unsuccessful attempt by her mother at getting a picture of herself painted when she was carrying her around. the painter said he didn’t have a canvas as big) not been intent on watching the handing over of golden statuettes in recognition of histrionic excesses committed while the father was trying to indulge himself in the act of siring. he didn’t let go of his habit of smoking cigars even then, even when they went damp with human sweat and else. the father felt that cigars imbued him with a feeling a power, ever since he realized that they were what kings and presidents preferred once they were done with their petite share of dinner from a spread which could easily have fed his family of five twice in the same day. not that the father cared about the hungry, but it was something about the phallic cigar which got him hard, not just in his nether regions. emperors had their regal staffs, and the father had the symbolic cigar in his hands – the perfect jerk holding the phallus. jerk?

of course, there have been presidents who have displayed a marked affinity for the cigar, in flavors other than plain vanilla ones. some displayed a penchant for birthday cakes which may have been vanilla, but whose frosting was made heavenly by a husky rendition of the birthday song. the president’s knees surely would’ve been wobbly as jelly then. marilyn’s knees were all there was to the picture, till the time it leaked out of the classified secret service files that the president had all along been under the steel grate while it bellowed air out of the duct, filming from another angle. the leaked documents also mentioned that there was good reason for the president to have been under the grate and for marilyn to have held her dress down against the blast of air – this just aided in making the suction effect of the duct underground give the president the biggest orgasm of his life. (it is mentioned in passing in the document that if the walls of the duct would have had cunts instead of ears, the president would have been run down by a mob of his own progeny. but then presidents have a way of facing their progeny, or rather it is nations which come to terms with the bastards their presidents leave in the gutters below us, sans mothers). the private who leaked the documents is still said to be in an chamber beneath the oval office.

oscar, in the meantime, was getting overly obsessed with the cause for the lament in his dreams. so much so that he started spending more and more time flitting between dreams and reality. what slashed at him was that the pain of a reality where he didn’t know nothing cut deeper than the joy of a dream where he didn’t know if he knew anything. he reached a stage where the only way he could distinguish whether he was dreaming or awake was when his fingers would bleed while playing the guitar. that was when he knew for sure that he was dreaming. in real life, he was too much of a sissy to see blood. even if he had a mob pedigree to boast of. in one of his dreams, he saw a bespectacled old man with a scraggly beard walk up to him and start playing the guitar alongside. oscar definitely thought that the old man was slow with his hands, but then he thought that his perpetual stonerheadedness outside dreams had entered dream state too. the old man started playing a tune which sported a lament which ran much deeper than anything oscar had experienced in any of his dreams. not really surprising, but the old man wrote this tune for a spurned love. a love that both he and his closest friend used to have at one time in their lives, but which never really stayed with either of them. it was widely believed she went and joined manson for a while, but she didn’t find it as much fun to be part of the plan to slash an impregnated sharon tate. she wanted more, which is why she probably got married to the yakuza mob is what they used to say now. everybody knows the yakuza have definitely eccentric tastes when it comes to meting out a (mis)fortune. the mob had decreed that this tune never be played ever by that scraggly old man. but the old man was in the comfort of dreams, where he thought no one could do him any harm. suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a piercing shrill sound, and a stone shattered the glasses of the old man’s specs. oscar felt like screaming but he realized that he had never uttered a word ever in his dreams. he just didn’t have the capacity to speak in dreams. and thus the mob came down as stones raining from the skies. they gave a run for what is said to have happened in sodom. when it was all over, oscar tried to look up and see if he could recognize any faces from the mob. he could after all use his family connections to find out what happened and why. all he could see in the distance was a blurry vision of a smiling face, more beautifully angelic than any he had seen, and with each step he took towards it, the face just kept fading. as the face disappeared, those lips just whispered two syllables before vanishing into oblivion – layla.

oscar didn’t scream when he awoke. he was covered in cold sweat. he woke with a start. but his mind was clear now. he knew what was the cause of the lament in his dream now.

the old man got lynched. by the mob.
what made the scene worse was that the mob consisted of a singular pretty face.
obscene, more like it.
mobscene.

oscar would probably never fall in love. again.

(in the spirit of oscar wilde)
be obscene
be be obscene

*title and some bits inspired by ‘mobscene’, marilyn manson, and other bits of popular unpopular culture. the rest, well is just a figment of a fucked up fertile imagination, intent on getting, well, more fucked up*

after all, when did anyone think that the traffic converging into every empty nook before a traffic red light is something of a replica of tetrise! yes, that something was what my friend uttered, while seated on his ‘high’ hot seat.

so with images of that 8 bit precursor of whatever we see in the form of mmorpg’s and else, we entered the venue – the swank pool side of aqua at the park hotel. the imagery just got us hooked, as my friend started approaching greater altitudes with others joining in a collective ‘hiking’ endeavor. nice tripped out visual projections (with some unfortunate technical snags disrupting certain sections), and some excellent music by chintan kalra which added to the ecstatic mood. (no, nobody around me was on e, just in case anybody thought so).

as for me, i was quite contently happy with the cocktail of music and art. my physical movements, edging somewhat on hysteria, were just a manifestation of the calm inside.

after all, contentedness doesn’t always mean quietude. or does it?

***

for images from that night, click right here.

politics and music – not necessarily the best mix.

not always though. as milind showed that night. mighty impressive the manner in which he played effortlessly that night. the fact that you were witnessing a member of parliament playing in a pub with an upturned jacket collar, denims and slippers just brought home the fact better.

adil & vasundhara – said earlier, say again – always a pleasure watching you guys.

see images from the night here.