1650-The Number of the Beast

Iron Maiden, the legendary heavy metal band, played in Mumbai day before yesterday. It was their first gig in this city and only their second ever in India. Since they're a pretty old band (by this I mean the ages of the band members), I figured they'd wouldn't be returning too many times more and this was probably my last chance to attend a Maiden show (Maiden don't have concerts, they put on "shows").

So I bought the most expensive ticket, Rs.1650, left early from college and presented myself at MMRDA grounds in Bandra-Kurla complex at about 2:30 PM. I'd been hoping to catch a good place in line but I was to be disappointed. Hardcore fans had practically been camping out on the grounds to be first in line and stand in the first row. I managed to cut ahead in line (not something I feel particularly guilty about; everyone was doing it) and ended up with a group of hardcore fans from south Mumbai (Bombay for them) who'd been waiting since early morning. Since they were built like the Spartan troops from 300, I negleced to mention that I'd arrived only minutes earlier. One burly guy with a bushy beard bore a striking resemblance to Gerard Butler as King Leonidas. As the crowd behind us started shoving and pushing us, he even bellowed, "SPARTANS!!!!".

There was an interminable wait for the gates to the grounds to be opened. After standing in line for about and hour and a half with a friend who arrived later on, we were finally let in. Everyone was thoroughly frisked and water bottles, confiscated, ostensibly on the grounds that they could be used as projectiles. However, we were much aggrieved when the sponsors, Pepsi, handed out free samples of their new can. These were then then used as projectiles on the poor opening band (whose name I never did learn, due to all the booing and jeering). Water, meanwhile, was selling for Rs. 20 a glass. To punish the organisers for ripping us off so blatantly, I did my best to litter as extravagantly as possible, quite at odds with my normal no-littering habit.

At 4 PM, my friend and I took our positions in the crowd, having visited the loo and the water stand. I'd been warned by my Spartan friends outside that once inside it was a matter of "conserving your strength" till the main show was actually on. At 5:15 PM, the opening band I'd mentioned earlier came on to play. The hour between entering the venue and the opening band's performance was spent trying to remain on my feet against the powerful, ever-shifting tides of humanity. Every minute was a struggle: a struggle to stand, a struggle to keep one's foot out from under someone else's foot and a struggle to draw fresh air into one's lungs, air laced with the stench of cigarette smoke, marijuana and alcohol.

The newbie band failed to make much inpact on the crowd, but I rather liked their last song. It was titled Marijuana and although the subject itself didn't appeal to me, it had a good sound. Local bands don't get much airplay on radio stations or TV; as a result they aren't much known. However, being unknown is no reason for being scorned, the way they were by the crowd on that day.

Next up was Maiden bassist Steve Harris's daughter Lauren and her band. The crowd had a similar opinion of her music as that of the first band; this had been made clear to me even before entering the grounds. Lauren Harris had performed for her father's earlier Indian gig too and fans who'd attended that show knew her. However, she is much more attractive than the lead singer of the first band (he was a guy, hence not attractive to the majority of the crowd) so the crowd mostly ogled, instead of booing. There was more shoving, falling down and getting up again, and shouts of "Don't push!" throughout the gig. Indeed the cameraman in front of the stage was rather enjoying himself, watching the crowd sway with the sweep of the camera. The girls in the crowd clearly had the worst of it; they were too short to see anything if they were more than a few rows back and too weak (physically) to withstand the exertions of standing in one place in that mob. And although I didn't see it, there must've been plenty of groping going on too. The conditions were ripe for it. It really was a most distasteful scene.

After another interminable wait, the Indian band Parikrama took the stage. They were to be the last opening act, and as their set came to an end, the crowd got wilder and wilder. By the time they finished, I could not breathe. I had worked my way to the third row and I was close to passing out from lack of fresh air. It was hard to believe that a large portion of the crowd was made up of South Mumbai (Bombay!) brats who detested local trains for exactly these reasons, yet conditions were far worse here. I could stay no longer and I surrendered my hard-won position near the front row and made my way out to the soft drink stand, for some fluids and fresh air.

Pepsi was Rs. 30 a glass (another rip-off)  but I bought some anyway and slaked my thirst. After a breather and a joyous running-into with another friend (I'd lost the ones I'd come in with a long time ago), 
I made ready to go back. It was at this time that the main show finally started.


The opening of the video of Aces High played. It was footage from the Battle of Britain, fought over the skies of Britain between the Royal Air Force and Hitler's Luftwaffe. In the background, plays Winston Churchill's "We shall never surrender" speech. The band burst onto the stage in a blaze of bright lights, to a wild reception from the expectant crowd. It was quite superb to see the lead singer, Bruce Dickinson, almost 50, to be singing with such energy. The crowd went wild and I followed them. The band (for the record: Janick Gers, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray on guitar, Steve Harris on bass and Nicko McBrain, dubbed a "sartorial casulaty" for wearing shorts, by Dickinson, on drums) really knows how to put on a show. For the song The Trooper an ode to the Light Brigade that perished in a tragic charge against Russian armies in the Crimean War, Dickinson put on a British soldier's redcoat and pranced about waving a tattered and burnt Union Jack.

The show was two hours long and every single minute of it was enjoyable. The theatrical elements culminated with a giant Eddie robot striding onto the stage. It was basically guy on stilts wearing a sinister Eddie suit (Eddie, the band's
mascot, is a scary-looking guy). 

After the show, which ended at 9:45, getting back home was hell. No rickshaws outside the venue and we had to walk halfway back to Kurla. Two of my friends managed to get a hold of plectrums thrown by band members; this is a pretty good souvenir.

That's pretty much the story of my time at the Maiden gig. Sorry for the lame ending. I'm in a hurry. I'll add pictures later. Promise.

Lessons from a Cement Company

I' m sure just about everyone has seen the ad. Two brothers, B R Thakur and S R Thakur, reconcile after many years, over the wall that divides their ancestral property. "Chhotu!" says the older, more conservative brother, dressed in kurta-pyjama and a turban. His side of the family mirror him in all respects. "Bhaiyya!" cries out the younger brother, with just as much feeling. He is more modern in dress and appearance, just like his side of the family.

The brothers decide to break down the wall separating them. They call upon family members to bring the barrier down and the two clans use their respective methods to try and do the job. They are, ultimately, unsuccessful. "Tootegi kaise? Ambuja Cement se deewaar jo bani hai?"

Does this seem familiar? If it doesn't, it should. The Father of the nation of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, while negotiating with Lord Mountbatten for the vivisection of India, assured him that Partition would be like a case that he had once handled, a property dispute between two brothers. The brothers were at each others' throats during the case, but a year after the judgement they were "the best of friends". He was confident that this would be the case with India and Pakistan.

Regrettably, that hasn't happened. Our nations still view each other with suspicion, over many issues: terrorism, Kashmir, the 1971 war of Bangladeshi Independence and now, nuclear capability. The man on the street in India is mostly hostile towards Pakistan as a nation, though individual Pakistani visitors are still treated with courtesy. We have come to see Pakistan as a poor, backward, dangerous nation, run in turn by fanatic mullahs and power-hungry army officers. We see it as a nation that routinely bombs our cities without declaring war on us openly.

The Pakistanis, in turn, see us as a cruel nation, suppressing Kashmiri aspirations for independence or accession to Pakistan. We are the interfering busybodies that severed their nation in two. We are the knaves that wouldn't give them their share of the treasury during Partition (in India's defence, we were fighting a war with them at that moment).Nonetheless, Indian visitors to Pakistan are welcomed warmly as is the tradition in those parts.

As an Indian, I think that most people wish Pakistan would just go away. They wish that there were no more bomb blasts in our cities and massacres in Kashmir; these are things that deter foreign investors. Europe and America are seem closer to us: culturally, politically, diplomatically and, in these days of dizzying prosperity, economically. Pakistan is the poor, embarrassing and hostile neighbour that we wish would just move to the slum.  "WE are part of high society now"; this is the general feeling towards Pakistan, no matter how much we may love Adnan Sami or Strings.

Let's not kid ourselves. Our nations are inextricably bound. What affects them affects us and vice versa. Pakistan's failures, economic and political, should be a cause of grave concern for us, rather than a reason to feel smug. The reasons for it are both pragmatic and idealistic. The most compelling reason for us to wish Pakistan economic progress and political stability is to free the country from the clutches of India's sworn enemies: the Islamic fundamentalists and the Pakistan Army. Democracy, real democracy, not the sham being perpetrated by Pervez Musharraf, is the only hope for peace between our countries. Let's not forget, Pakistan have a nuclear arsenal and delivery capability, gifts from our other  dear neighbour, the People's Republic of China. The cost of a war would be too much for us to bear, even in victory.

The idealistic reason for wishing Pakistan success is simply because they were, and still are, a part of us. Bengal and Punjab, the two regions most affected by Partition, have strong, vibrant cultures. The bond of language and culture are very strong, even when separated by boundaries. There are many families in both nations having relatives on the other side. Sindhis in India and other displaced communities on both sides still bear the scars of being torn from their motherland. Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis still have more in common with each other than almost anyone else.

What is the point of this post? It is a prayer for peace. In a perfect world, our nations will form a European Union-like group. If France and Germany can share a common currency and allow their citizens 
to cross borders freely, a mere sixty years after fighting the most destructive war in history, why can't we? The Continent, which was once war-infested, has known its longest period of peace in thousands of years. "Imagine all the people...sharing all the world"-John Lennon

Tomorrow

I was out with some old friends late last night. It was your normal guys' night out on the town, singing "Ho-ho-ho and a bottle of rum", drinking two and generally having a good time driving around on the empty nighttime roads.

We got to talking; about old times, old friends, memories from school. "Do you remember we had samosa parties after school?" said one, "Now kids that age have booze parties. Things have really changed huh?" (I'm paraphrasing and translating but that was the gist of it).

I replied by saying something like, "There is more money everywhere nowadays. You can see it all around. Schoolchildren with mobiles. For us a bicycle was a big buy."

My friend wondered out loud,"What'll our kids' lives be like then? If things can change so drastically since we were in school, our kids will have completely different lifestyles. How'll we control them? Say they drink like we're doing right now. Everyone around them will be doing it."

The "we" was inaccurate since my better half has put an embargo on my alcohol imports (so to speak) and when I'm out with my friends at night, not drinking while they are, I think of her as just my half (that's why drinking is a bad habit, whether you do it or not, but I digress).

I replied again, "Maybe drinking and stuff will be acceptable enough that they won't hide it from us, as we do from our parents. And we in turn, will just tell them about the dangers and trust them to take care of themselves. Of course, my own kids will be out of luck, because of their mom, but they're not the majority."

He said,"So basically, they'll be living a Western kind of lifestyle." That just about sums it up.

Our nation is caught in a hurricane of change right now. Six months, no two months ago, we bought our vegetables at the corner vegetable vendor's. Our groceries came from the neighbourhood kiranawalla, eggs and mushrooms and stuff, from another grocery store because the first one doesn't stock them (he's a Jain, I think). Now, I can go to Aditya Birla Group's More, or Godrej's Nature-whatever or another store owned by a certain Gujju guy who is one of the world's richest people now (big deal!), and buy all the above 
mentioned stuff.

Change is everywhere. All around us. We have to make sure it reaches everywhere. Not just a handful of cities and states. Everyone must benefit. This is our best chance to help every single citizen of this country be happy. Money doesn't buy 
happiness.

But its absence makes it kind of hard to be happy.