An Enchanted Evening

An Enchanted Evening it really was. Pleasant wind, full moon, clear skies and .... and around 1000 people around. If you were expecting a lit-candle and a woman in red, dont. If (and that is a Times-New-Roman, size 128, all-bold, underlined font there) and when that happens, this blog would never mention something on those lines.

It was "Shakti" Night in bangalore and true to our wallet-conscious mindsets, we had settled for the cheapest tickets of the lot. Most of the crowd in our gallery had settled in, but surprise, surprise, a bunch of front-row seats were vacant. Laughing at the ignorance of the folks inside, we dashed to the front row. What was better about those seats was that it was only a few feet away from the last row of the next class. So close that I could get up, roll today's newspaper and whack a fly on someones head who paid twice as much as I did and that was like super cool. As we sat there basking in our own trivial triumph, We saw the breathtaking view there before us, probably better than what even the highest class could afford. Yep, we had an unbeatable view of the monstrous speakers that were mounted one over the other. Just that big, black, holey monster apparatus from left to right and nothing else.

Finally, we managed to find three seats in a row and we dug in. And only after we dug in, we realised the hopelessness of our case. We had SMS-freaky girl to our right, Undecipherable-dialect-speaking loud-mouth-daddy with equally-confusing-dialect-speaking louder-mouth-mummy and constantly-wailing-baby behind, mmmmm-its-so-cooooold-[snuggle]-isnt-it-sweetheart-[snuggle-closer] couple in the front and carnatic-head-bangers (head shakers who fly kites in thin air, literally) all around. Given the options that we had, the only thing seemed to be head banging and we jumped into it posing as carnatic know-alls shaking our heads so violently as if we took The Chair after a long walk on the Green Mile. While we were depressed with this pre-concert setting, the host lightened up the situation by venturing on to the stage and thanking the main sponsors, "Windsor Manure" (Windsor Manor) and also requesting the audience "not to eat their insides" (which turns out to be a request for us not to eat anything inside the auditorium).

Inspite of all this, Shakti rocked. For any newbie to indian-rock-fusion, this would have opened atleast a billion gateways into music. Shankar Mahadevan, a new addition to Shakti, did his bit with vocals. Mclaughlin has the guitar in hand, but he makes it sound like the veena. Shrinivas has the mandolin in hand, but makes us hear a violin (agree, that bit was crazy, but ask any newbie to such music and he'd probably wager on shrinivas playing the violin). Selvaganesh had this ganjira in hand. Smallish, odd-looking, simple instrument. But the "thani aavardhanam" (Individual Showcase) which he did with that was simply as(t)ounding. And then came Zakir. I have a feeling he was having a philosophical conversation with the Tabla than just playing it. Towards the end, both the percussionists got into a dialogue, joined by the other three and ended in a crescendo which would've left even the tight-fisted asking for more.

On the way out, i realised something. This concert had chairs, audience who did not smoke weed, and no one climbing on top of another screaming. If it had been Shakira in concert instead of Shakti, errmm, that could've resulted in a whole new blog altogether.