Day 252/366

As a part of my job, I had to organize a fashion show today. Yes, me organizing a fashion show. Very funny. Laugh. But the only good thing about it was the fact that I got to hear Thaalavattam open the show. It was like an LSD trip I will probably never get to experience. After 10 hours of running around to the extent that I couldn't feel my feet, I went all the way to a random park in the heart of the city to hear Swarathma. It's not like I haven't heard them before. I've heard them enough number of times for Jishnu to call me 'connoisseur' and ask for feedback. Still, I went only because I haven't had a chance to hear them since I came to Bangalore. And I don't regret it. I was on my way home after the gig and Varun called to meet for dinner. I actually told the auto driver to take a U-turn and went back to meet him without thinking twice. That's how addictive music can be. Over dinner, the talk was only about various aspects of music. I got back home feeling nicely tired.

It was my aunt who told me that I looked happier than I did on normal work days probably because of the music based interaction I had had. I got excited about the scene and started telling her about recent gigs I've been for, about conversations with people in the scene, about being called 'Chotu' by some amazing human beings who got lucky enough to pursue the right passion, about going for NH7 Weekender as my 3 days off this year. 

I had too much too say. And I realized that this is really what I want to get into. I want to look for a course somewhere in this world that gives me a better understanding of music. I want to do music journalism or know the nuances of being a good artiste/band manager. I want to eventually write a book on my journey with music. I've anyway done my college dissertation (80 page long) on the independent music scene in India. That's a better start than I could have asked for.

And it got me thinking about my first Indian music moment. I was in Kerala on a holiday with my cousins and aunt and uncle. Someone was playing Indian Ocean's Kandisa in the car and everyone was hooked to it. That's all we heard throughout the trip. A few years later, I was in charge of promoting the band's documentary on their musical journey in Pune. That same year, I introduced that same cousin of mine to tons of original music by various Indian musicians. 

Unfortunately, I got into the music scene quite late. But better late than never. My batch was coming back from the Symbiosis Lavale campus after some random radio meet we were forced to sit through. 'Attendance compulsory', we were told. On the bus back, Mr Sahil Khan jumps on to our bus and starts talking about a web portal called 'The Tossed Salad' which he had started. I want to try my hand at it and I take down his email address and a few days later, I'm on board. I am told to review Ashima Aiyer's album. I had no idea how I was supposed to go about doing that but I was honest about what I liked and disliked and just wrote it down. On her MySpace page, I saw Nikhil D'Souza's page and clicked it and fell in love with the kind of music he was making. I started exploring more and more music. I mailed him to send me the lyrics of some of his songs and he sent them along with the mp3 files. I was pulled into the scene, little by little. 

Soon, High Spirits became a second home. I was the lonely looking girl who went for gigs alone and sipped my beer. I started interviewing musicians, getting into their minds, understanding what was good music from bad, what the difference in quality different music venues had. It was all an obsession. Sometimes, they'd say it was getting too much. But who the 'they' anyway? This was something that was happening too naturally to try and stop the flow of. 

There's been no looking back. Even in the newspaper I work in now, I'm the unofficial music writer. At least for now, that is. I hope there's more of this field that's going to come my way. I don't think I will ever get over my first love. The connection's way too strong to try and contain. Who am I to meddle with a higher power anyway?