Live Concert – Or the Saga of the Lost Cell phone

A few days ago, the gang and I attended Sonu Nigam’s live performance at the Kala Ghoda art festival. Unfortunately one of us was MIA (Missing In Action!!). It was a mixed bag of an evening. Things began well enough with us meeting up at the venue. My mom and her friend were with me. Thankfully I was able to let go of them soon!! An hour or so of aimlessly wandering about the art installations and the various booths yielded nothing but overpriced ‘arty’ stuff none of us were interested in buying. The concert was scheduled to begin at 7.30 and we reached the site a bit before 7. Big Mistake. We should have made it to the concert site as soon as we reached there. The Asiatic Library steps were already full and the crowd spilled over on to the road. It was like a live many-headed monster moving in all possible directions. At 7 the opening act fired up and miss ‘Gunjan’ waltzed onto the stage. We couldn’t actually see the stage but the audio worked well enough to inflict one of the worst renditions of ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ on the hapless listeners! All three of us were animatedly discussing where Sonu Nigam would be right now – “oh he must have just left his place / must be stuck in traffic / must be in his vanity van”. Several theories later, the screeching was over and the main act started.
There was a lot of pushing, we were jostled around madly several times and had to retreat to a much safer place at the back of the crowd, unsavoury characters were present in abundance, but all of it faded into insignificance once Sonu Nigam’s dulcet tones flooded the arena. He is genuinely one of the few singers who are REALLY good live. So many ‘studio singers’ are terrible live, and it was heaven to hear his velvety voice wash over you. There was some really sad mimicry in the middle, but we got over it soon. Goodness knows why he chose a made-up song which went “Aloo-Kanda-Bhindi-Mutter Paneer”. For me, the best song was from the newer Bhagat Singh movie – ‘Mera Rang de Basanti Chola’. It is a beautiful song that brings out the best in his voice, and the patriotism in the song really makes me sentimental. All of us were singing along to almost each and every song.
Of course, the best situations and the best movies often have an intriguing subplot and ours was no different. Intrigue spilled over when two teenage girls started arguing right next to us. It turned out that one of them had lost her cell phone. Someone in the crowd had found it, answered when the girl called and was now subjecting her to trashy talk like “I’ll give you your phone if you give me a kiss”. It was so irritating. And of course, the spineless jerk spoke like that only to that girl and hung up when our guy blasted him out. There is no dearth of jerks in the world I guess. All this drama notwithstanding, we all enjoyed the performance, the girls too. Listening to live music is truly one of the best experiences!