In early January, when we had first arrived in Mumbai, my husband forwarded me an e-mail, accompanied by the simple phrase, “do you want to go?” I, naturally, thought it was a joke, like in Chicago when I would leave Joffrey Ballet pamphlets sitting about the home, knowing full well the image could never convince my husband to take me again.
After all, the e-mail was for a concert. My husband has been to a grand total of zero concerts in his life. My modest number of concerts is three; as a third grader I went to see the New Kids on the Block; I saw Matchbox 20 as a high schooler; and I saw Toby Keith in concert while in college. Never have either of us been to lollapalooza, nor the free concerts in Grant Park, despite living, for three years, in an apartment building that in fact overlooked the musicians. Thus, to me, it was not a serious question.
After a few minutes of face-to-face, rather than e-mail conversation, I became aware of my mistake. Yes, my husband truly did want to go to a concert. I was flabbergasted. I assured him that I wouldn’t have fun, but would go if he really wanted to. After all, we have to make friends somehow.
Now, it isn’t to say that I don’t like music. From Thanksgiving until New Years, I have my radio on continuously. Yes, I listen to the all-Christmas music station. It makes me incredibly happy. But my radio is off for the non- holiday season. I know the words to all of my favorite musicals, such as The Sound of Music, Grease, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Annie, The Wizard of Oz, etc. I love those songs. I can, of course, sing along to any Disney Princess movie. I am great at identifying the 1990’s WWF theme songs. I enjoy listening to Lady Gaga, and pretty much any music my parents played in the house (Beatles, Stones, Eagles, Doors, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, etc). I just don’t listen to music to listen to music. It is always a background thing for me.
Looking back, I do remember that my husband used to play that car radio game where you name the song and singer before the other people in the car. At one point, he had a large collection of CDs. But we are getting old, and I had forgotten he actually had a desire, at one point, to just sit and listen to music.
I have mentioned before how obsessed the city seems to be with Bryan Adams. When I noticed his name on the concert e-mail, I recognized it, just as one might recognize Lex Luther as the bald bad guy on Superman, without really remembering what Luther did that was so bad. But you know you’ve heard the name before, vaguely remember that Lex Luther is no good guy. That is about as deep as my Bryan Adams memories go. I knew that I would recognize some of his songs. But for the life of me, without google at my side, I couldn’t tell you what those songs were.
Fast forward to last Saturday, and we were arriving at the concert. We met up at a coffee house, with other members of my husband’s company, to pick up our tickets. For the first time in five months, I bought a cup of coffee. I was worried I might fall asleep.
We arrived at the grounds a short rickshaw ride later. It was actually quite confusing to find the location, and I’m very glad that a Hindi-speaking co-worker was in the same auto as us. The concert was an outdoor concert, of course. Like San Francisco, there are dry and rainy seasons here. I understand it, but it is still mind-boggling to know, with a 100% certainty, that it will not rain for so many months straight. For a Michigander, you have to be prepared for anything. Heck, I hear it is 40 degrees right now, in February! My cousin is facebooking about flip-flops in winter. In Michigan, you are always prepared for any form of precipitation and wild temperature fluctuations. It is just weird to have (to me) absolutely no change in the weather on a daily basis. Or at least, I would call the weather changes here too subtle to even matter on a daily basis. To the people who were born and raised here, of course, they are quite varying.
The concert was held on a big, fairly even ground, and the walls were made of the sheets of corrugated metal that acts as housing/roofs for so many people. The walls were held up with thick bamboo sticks. I actually even took a photo of this. It is rather blurry, but you can see the bamboo sticks and wall. And a police guard. I think the walls are actually permanent. From the picture, you can see that it has a pretty nice sidewalk.
Outside the concert, there were (I believe) four entrances. The VVIP1, VVIP2, GOLD, and SILVER. Us SILVER ticket holders had to walk to the opposite side of the ‘arena’ to enter. We got in our lines (gender specific, of course), and were told to throw away our bottle of water. There seems, in general, to be a lack of trash bins in this country. So we gingerly placed our bottle on the stack of other discarded items thrown about on the ground, and glanced around dubiously, feeling guilty for littering. No one blinked an eye at our littering, though.
Inside, it was huge. The hard-packed dirt was covered with bright green nylon tarps. You can see gaps in the cover from the photo. The SILVER section was in the very back, so we couldn’t even see the stage unless we sort of jumped. The light scaffolding was directly between the stage and us. Instead of watching Bryan live, we would be watching him on the four large screens projecting images from the stage.
I of course, immediately found the most important piece of information- the location of the bathrooms. You don’t want it to be dark and realize you have no idea where they are located! There was a line of port-o-potties on either side of us. For once in my life, the line for the women was much shorter than for the men! That was an exciting bit of unexpected luck. Only once did I have to snap at someone not to cut in line. So the people at the concert seemed a bit better behaved than the general population.
We also noticed how tall all of the people seemed to be. They were, for the most part, our own height. It really brought to life how important it is to be able to afford good nourishment for your children to grow. Clearly, most people at the concert were wealthy. It was the first place I’ve been where I didn’t quite feel like a giant.
My husband and I quickly rubbed our rose-scented bug spray lotion on every nook and cranny of our exposed bodies, while his co-workers laughed at our American weaknesses. But I know how many mosquitoes are in that location, and I wasn’t taking any chances. By the way, when I got home, I found ZERO new bites, so that lotion is pretty amazing. And well worth the laughs!
We pushed our way to the front of the SILVER section to see what we could see. Ahead, it looked like a large area that we are presumed was the ‘gold’ section. That section could actually see the stage. To the front right and left were the VVIP sections. VVIP1 had chefs, even. You could see their hats from the distance. They also got some free red glow stick thingy, which you could also see quite clearly from the distance. I, of course, was instantly jealous and wished I had a free red glowstick thingy.
The VVIP1 tickets cost 10000 rupees. Those were THE most expensive tickets. That is about $222. Our ‘cheap’ tickets were 2000 rupees, or about $45. I don’t go to concerts in the US, but it seems like a small range between the cheapest and most expensive. Especially for India. $45 certainly isn’t pocket money here.
Any large gathering requires knowing the attendance, and this concert was no exception. At one point, he called us, '20,000 something friends’. So there were about 20,000 people at the concert. The area was so large I would have had no way to guess how many people were there. But I was surprised by how UNCROWDED it was. True, we stood near the back, but there was plenty of space around us. Being India, I had expected quite a crowd. But it was peacefully nice.
Men in multi-colored clown wigs passed out free packets of potato chips (herb and lime flavored, they were delicious), and vendors walked through the crowds selling tiny bottles of Pepsi and other pops (for about $1), waters, corn snacks, samosas, etc. We ate the free potato chips, but avoided the yummy looking food, since we didn’t know how it had been prepared. I still wasn’t quite ready to litter, despite our early actions at the entryway, so I shoved my empty Pepsi bottle and chip packets in my back pocket. At least, they stayed there until we found the designated spot on the ground where everyone else threw their trash.
When we entered the concert grounds, canned music was playing. It was all pretty good, basic music that any American would enjoy. So I started to get excited about the concert and even cracked a smile, which I am sure relieved my husband!
He wanted to find a place to sit on the ground, but I refused, under the worry of stampedes, which seem to happen with regularity in this country. No need to be trampled by 20,000 people when some silly thing happened. There were some people sitting among the throngs of standing people, but it was dark, and I just didn’t want to be bumped.
When Bryan Adams finally took the stage, he simply started playing. Eventually, he took the time to stop singing and said, “Hi, I’m Bryan”. But that was nearly the extent of his speaking. He just sang, with maybe two small breaks, throughout which he was talking rather than singing. It was very impressive, according to my husband, who knows musical things like that better than me.
When he started playing, however, I was immediately disappointed. I did not recognize the song. I took that as a bad omen- wouldn’t he start with a song everyone loves, to get them excited? Well, based on the cheering, probably everyone else did recognize it! He continued playing. And playing. It was a full hour before I recognized a single song! Oh my, that was boring for me.
I entertained myself, during that first hour, by watching a man with a very talented air guitar. He was dressed in all black, and had 16 images of Barak Obama on his shirt. He had glasses, short, grayish hair, and sweat dripping over his entire body. It was clearly one of the best days of his life. He was basically air-guitaring a wide circle around us, since we were in a fairly open space. He was so enthusiastic, and so incredibly happy. I was so jealous of how happy he was. Yes, some might say he was just making a fool of himself, dancing around with his air guitar, jamming right next to random strangers, down on his knees at time, running full force at others, bumping into us occasionally, and making up odd dance steps. But I just wished I could feel that incredibly happy over this music. At one point, my husband, looking at him, simply said, “I’m so glad he was able to get a ticket”. I felt the same way. You could just see the excitement and happiness exuding out of him.
Watching him really made me think I should stop taking notes in my blackberry and actually listen to the music I don’t recognize. To say I didn’t recognize the songs isn’t completely true. Quite frequently, I would recognize the opening keys of a song, or a line or two. It really perplexed me at first, as to why I didn’t recognize more. I finally realized I recognized the songs/ intro strumming because of my iTouch.
My sister gave me her old iTouch, with plenty of songs on it. However, many of the songs she had herself purchased, and iTunes wouldn’t give me permission to play them. So I had, before leaving for India, gone through it and removed the songs she had purchased from iTunes. I’m sure there is a more time-efficient way to do this, but I did it by clicking on each and every song in my iTunes library, and listening to see if it would play or not. So effectively, I had gone through all the songs on the iPod, but had only played the opening second or two of each song, to make sure it would work! Then I would move onto the next song. As a consequence, I also knew many song titles. So there you have it. Thanks to iTunes making me delete my sister’s purchases, I know the beginning sounds of at least 1000 songs, but don’t have any clue as to what the rest of the song is about!
At one point, when I again had never heard the song, my husband leaned over and said, “if you don’t recognize this one, then you’ll only recognize one all night.” Sigh. That was disappointing to learn! Another time, he said, “you know this one!” To which I replied, “nope.” Apparently he had played it to for me before. Feeling guilty, I retorted that I know music about as well as he remembers the tree names that I teach him. I can identify quite a few trees, you know!
After that first hour, it was much less boring, and I enjoyed myself. In fact, I recognized about five songs. But it still didn’t turn me into a concert-goer!
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