Was DNA Twiddling Their Thumbs?

I'm no expert on music events, but I've had some experience with events in general, and music events in particular, to add my two cents worth in this uproar created by the Metallica debacle in Gurgaon.


First let me set the background a little. Traditionally, Indian metal fans have not had much more to satisfy themselves with apart from illegally downloaded music. I remember when I was growing up the likes of Napster and AudioGalaxy (still considered my favourite online music community) were the saviours... But things were not easy for us back in the day. The RIAA was hellbent on making our lives hell, and most music shops had not even heard of some of the bands I was listening to at age thirteen. Things got better though - today you can walk into a music store and actually find some bands, and of course torrents are the answer to all of life's problems. BUT, metal shows were still a rarity... My first recollection of a BIG metal act in India is of Iron Maiden in 2007. That was a dream come true for some 70,000 metal fans in India. Since then, we've had a pretty good in-flow of niche and commercial metal acts from all over the world...


Metallica is a different league altogether though. They've been around forever (forever means since before I've been around :-P). They are one of the biggest bands in the world today, to the extent that it is almost impossible for any new band to be as big, especially in the same genre. Whether you like them or not, you've probably heard them at least a couple of times in your life. Many of us grew up listening to them and the opportunity to watch Metallica live is almost like a childhood dream come true. With the canvas painted like this, everyone in India knew that the Metallica show was going to be complete mayhem and madness, but quite magical... That was till some inconspicuous retard got on stage at 6:30 PM on October 28^th, 2011, at the Leisure Valley Grounds in Gurgaon and announced that Metallica cannot play today because of some 'technical difficulties' and will play tomorrow at 4 PM. There were at least 30,000 of us in the grounds at that time, all stunned and shocked that the FIRST ever Metallica show in India just got canned. I'm sure there were others apart from me who thought, hoped and wished that it was just a prank. Alas, that was just wishful thinking...

What followed was mayhem, but it was quite different from the mayhem we had come prepared for. Fans went berserk. Fingers were shown, obscenities were screamed, the stage was broken down, banners were burnt, equipment was thrashed... Some of us just stood in a corner, dejected in disbelief. And while I will not condone the violence and vandalizing that ensued the cancellation, I can somehow understand the emotions of the dejected fans, some who've waited all their lives for this, some who would've saved for months to travel cross-country to watch their favourite band live. It is natural to feel cheated to the point that you get violent.

This brings me to what I really want to talk about... What, after all, got the event canceled? Was it technical difficulties? Was it the rowdy crowd that broke the front barrier? Or was the band simply throwing a bitch fit? Here is where my miniscule experience with music festivals and live events comes into the picture, and I sincerely want to ask the organizers, DNA, what they were doing eight months prior to the show when they started preparing for it? Twiddling their thumbs?! Anyone who has attended a couple of big concerts in their life would have realised even before they entered the venue that chaos reigned the entire place. Parking was haywire – we really didn't know where to enter from, where to get a parking ticket from, where to get the car checked, even though a parking attendant said all of this needed to be done. As we walked from the parking lot to the entrance gates, a huge swarm of people – like bees hovering around a beehive – greeted us. An indistinct sign told us this was the ticket counter and the entrance gates were up ahead. While walking in from the entrance gate we realised we were walking over broken barricades – remnants of the war fought a few hours back when the gates were opened. There were no proper lanes made for queues, you couldn't tell if the male and female security lines were different, or if there were any security lines to begin with. The peek into my bag was a mere formality; the only thing they paid any real attention to was my ticket. It was the same for the entire group I was with. Apart from the four people checking the crowd walking in, there was no security at the entrance; no bouncers to control any untoward instances.

Once inside the venue, the only things you could see clearly were toilet signages and DNA and Vladivar branding across the perimeter of the ground. You couldn't tell if there were any F&B stalls, where they were and what was available at the stalls. We finally found one one stall, again with bees flocking it. I managed to wriggle my way through the bees to the front and found that there was no water available, so we had to make do with an insipid burger and some coke. No other food stalls, no clear indication of where to get water from, and absolutely no alcohol. Shittness! While we were looking for food to fill our stomachs and water to quench our thirst, there was an American screaming into the PA system asking the crowd in the front to take a GIANT STEP BACKWARD (yes, the first thing that came to my mind was that Neil Amstrong would be twisting in his grave listening to these words). Apparently, the front barricade had broken down and the show could not begin till it was fixed. The LED screens (very small in comparison to the size of the venue) on both corners of the stage asked the crowd to move back while the barricade was fixed. This kept going on for two hours. During the entire time there was no sign of any security or crowd control measures. We did not see even a single person who looked like he belonged to a security agency employed to maintain some form of order. The reports from those in the front were no different... And then we all know by now what followed.

So was DNA really just twiddling their thumbs? Yes, the crowd was mad and chaotic. Yes, handling such large numbers is not an easy job. I am under no illusion that being on the other side of the stage is an easy cakewalk. I have been a part of and experienced some pretty tense last minute glitches backstage myself. But DNA is no neophyte to events and music concerts in India. They are the main event producers for the IPL. Thanks to them, the Indian audience is almost tired of watching Bryan Adams live (though his last show did get canceled for lack of permissions from the government). The Iron Maiden show mentioned above was done by them twice over in two different cities. Soon after the second Maiden show, they single handedly managed a maverick, deliriously drunk friend of mine who broke through all security checks to greet Machinehead personally! (He is quite a handful, trust me). After all this and more, one would think that handling a crowd of 25,000-30,000 people would be well within their capabilities. But the lack of security and crowd control measures, the inchoate F&B arrangements, inadequate toilet facilities for the magnitude of people gathered, and the complete last minute cancellation of the show leave a bittersweet taste in the mouth as far as DNA is concerned. Many of us will probably think twice before purchasing tickets for their next show...

And what do you do for a living?

Normal people are boring. And I mean this with no disrespect intended towards any of you normal people. The reason I call you boring is because many of you I've met don't seem to go through the level of internal strife that I am perpetually always in, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I might view my over thinking, over analyzing, agonizing brain as a virtue, but ask anyone who has bothered to have more than five conversations with me and they will vehemently disagree.

The reason I start with 'normal people' is because all of us go through normal day-to-day interactions, in the midst of which we sometimes (or quite often) happen to meet new people. The second question that always greets you when you meet someone new is – "So, what do you do for a living?" or some version of that. The people I see around me always have an answer to that very mundane question – I'm a banker, a journalist, a musician, a freelance writer, a full-time bum, or I work here and I do blah. When it is my turn to answer, I just fumble... What do I do for a living? Hell, I wish I knew! Hell, I wish I knew what you were asking me to begin with so I could start constructing an answer for you!!! Are you asking me how do I make the money I make? Or what do I do to live? Those two questions have diametrically opposite answers... Unless you're equating money to life, in which case I think I've already run out of things to say. How do I make my money – I work... Different things at different times, but as of now I go to an office, or try to since that is something that always makes me tardy. I talk to people, work on some excel sheets, organize some events, all to make me feel like I am saving the world, or at least some tiny little minuscule portion of it. And I get paid for saving that tiny little minuscule (sometimes). What do I do to live? I breathe, I eat... Don't we all?

I could probably package a nicely gift wrapped conventional answer, but there are some glitches in that, the most glaring of which being that I haven't quite 'subscribed' to a 'profession' yet. But aside from that, I have a very unsettling feeling about the ease with which that question is asked. What do I do for a living? Can you even begin to fathom everything that is encapsulated in that one simple line? You're almost asking me what am I willing to identify myself as. What is that pervading part of my life that defines me... That, my newly found friend, is heavy duty. And if we sit down to answer it, forget five conversations, we probably won't reach even the end of the first. Yes, I do wishfully dream of a day when I find what I do for a living. When my work is my life, and who I am, and how I live, and what I would like to be identified as. Till that day, I will resist being a manager or a journalist or an analyst or a film maker or a musician or a social worker. Till that day, I will resist putting a name and a tag on myself, because what if that is NOT what I do for a LIVING, but just something I do?

Turns and U-turns

Sometimes, thinking about tomorrow and the day after drives me crazy. Come to think of it, it is a strange concept – this whole tomorrow business. We spend a lot of time thinking about the future, working for the future and yet convincing ourselves that we are living in the present. I don't think I've ever been able to do a single thing in my life logically thinking of the future – the impulses are a little too strong to worry about the consequences... And yet, I find myself thinking about what life has in store and flipping out. Sometimes it is quite a liberating feeling though; you almost feel like a third person standing outside and viewing this strange phenomenon called you.

But yes, life does take strange turns and throws strange things at you. Some make you cry, some make you laugh... Some are just there. Most of the times, in the larger scheme of things it all doesn't matter. But the larger scheme is made up of a lot of smaller schemes and every experience leaves an impact on these small schemes, which could very well shake the larger picture. But you'd never know where it started, where it all began. I'm sitting here feeling a whole lot of love and pain within myself right now, but I really don't know where it all began. I'm thinking of five different things at the same time, and dreaming about some late night maggi, but would I ever know where it came from? And in the same realm of thought, as I think and obsess about myself and my life, I can't help but feel that I don't know a thing. None of us really do. We pretend, we wear cloaks, we make things make a difference, we smile, we talk, we love, we mess things up, and then we do things to fix it, or maybe we don't. We talk about ourselves, who we are, what we value, what we miss, what we love... But do we have any idea at all? Can you stop for a second and tell me who you really are? What makes you tick? Or are we all just pawns at the end of the day, part of a game where we have no clue about what is going on?