Eternal Wait Ends!

\m/ Call me obsessed. Call me crazed. There’s truth in that. It is the moral duty of a guitarist to be a fan of metal. Then you can choose your sub-genre. My vote goes to thrash and power metal.

It’s hard to not be partial to Finnish and Norwegian folk metal. And Ensiferum was the first band I had ever heard from this genre. Naturally, I was all gung-ho about seeing ENSIFERUM live; my first ever gig.

The OAT at IIT Powai was pretty deserted when we got there though LiveWire's opening band was already belting out some good stuff. We took our positions in the pit, me at the railing thanks to my great height and protracted ability to see over the heads of heavily built metalheads there. He ha.

Anyway, I ain’t complaining, because I got to see all the Fenders and Ibanez’s and Jacksons and Epiphones up close. The basses were three feet away from me, vocalists five, drums seven and leads ten. God! If I thought I was in heaven, I was so mistaken. Pro-nite, as they call it, began (after some really frustrating minutes or maybe years spent getting wet in the rain and watching blue tarps go over the double bass Yamaha drum kit that had me fascinated).

I’d thought that Slain from Bangalore was great (Mumbai’s Rosemary had had a really cute bassist but boring leads in pyjamas). Then Motherjane as the pronite opener was mind-blowing. Half of their face painted in a metalhead’s parody of Kathakali dancers, they really kicked ass. Their lyrics were a welcome refreshment from metal staples of death, destruction and freedom. They spoke of feminism, terror in daily life and flying. Metal with a real soul, reminding you that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The vocalist Suraj actually ducked to give me a wide grin as I punched the air in time to Mindstreet. The lead guitarist Baiju deserves special mention as he conjured a heady blend of Carnatic music with metal. Had I not seen it being played on a guitar 10 feet away, it would have been difficult to convince me that it wasn’t a violin that was being played. That man is pure unadulterated genius. I have listened to little else other than Motherjane in the two days since.

Then, it was time for the Vikings to take centre deck. The air was so thick with excitement that you could almost cut it with a guitar string. Even Janne’s sound checks sent the crowds careening. Wham-bang! It began...

And voila! I was in love. With Petri Lindroos. With Markus Toivonnen. With Emmi SIlvennoinen. The pit was a mass of banging heads, bouncing balls (the ones on the feet, you dirty mind) and \m/s. Ensiferum were dressed in Viking attire – skirts, greased vests (they were Reeboks by the way, I saw the tag on Sami. ha-ha), war-paint, gauntlets, satchels on chains, wild hair and, in Emmi’s case, streaked red hair and a pair of leather boots on a pair of legs I’d kill to acquire. Even the guitars were straight off a dragon-ship, with sweeping curves and Norse-God dimensions. They urged the crowds to chant as though rowing a huge dragon-vessel skirting Finnish crags. I wonder if Slartibartfast has met Ensiferum... Interspersed chants of AHTI (the Finnish God of sea) actually put the missing “Mood” in place before the “Indigo”. My hand was \m/-ing over the railing and nearly got singed in the pyrotechnic blasts from below the stage. Efforts to take it back in were pointless so I \m/-ed away anyway and flashed a tongue back at Markus as he pranced to our end of the stage, tongue stuck out and whammying away.

I believe some huge moshes must have happened behind me as I got shoved along the railing nearly five feet several times. But for all I care, they might have been making way for a spaceship to land. It was just me and the band all the way.

A special mention here for Apurva, my guardian angel metalhead who took special care to ensure that I don’t get squished in the mass of bodies. I’m sure very few pint-sized girls around the world could boast of having survived in the pit at a large gig. But then, girl power was heavy on the ground that evening as 20-year old Emmi SIlvennoinen gyrated her head making her Korg dance to her tunes, alongside the Vikings. All night, I overheard several sincere wishes from guys to be reborn as a Korg keyboard next time round. If you ask me, I’d rather be reborn as Emmi, than, say as Petri’s Kramer guitar. Ha.

Anyway, the excitement was a bit dampened as mum hadn’t expected me to be out so late (I got home at 1 a.m.). As soon as I got home, I gave mom a note-by-note account of the whole thing and POOF! A metalhead was born at home! I showed her some live videos of Ensiferum yesterday and a spondilytic head-banger metalhead was born at home.

And so, my tryst with the Windriders of the Viking-metal world came to a dramatic, fireworksy end and so does this post.

A Lesson in Humility

So this one's overdue. In the hubbub of city life, terror cutting through our minds, it's hard to find a quantum of solace, not the James Bond one (plenty of THAT if you want). I found one at, hold your breath, Versova; the very place in Mumbai touted as one of the most crowded and most stressful among the western suburbs.

Anyway, some of the shock of having found a pearl in a pigsty has already worn off, but anyway, I MUST write this for the sake of preserving this wonderful memory. Here goes:

Seldom does one get a chance to empty one's mind and lie back to commune with nature (sorry for having sounded cheesy, but there's more of that coming; I will not repeat my apology to those who care to accept it). Obviously, one jumps at the opportunity when offered it.

29^th November: I have just realized that my opportunity has come. And like any other harried city-dweller, I jump at it. 3 pm and everyone in the villa is asleep, in a final attempt to regain their spent energy for the evening (one of them Great Indian Weddings). No-one has succeeded in enticing me away from "being alone in the heat outside (sic)".

I lounge on the comfy chair and make several futile attempts to defocus my eyes. Soon it becomes clear to me that this isn't what Nature wants me to do right now. She is in show-off mode. She wants me to appreciate her beauty. So I watch Her show off for me. With the hustle of dirty shit-ridden Versova beach just out of my line of sight, it's weird to see the beauty of the ocean laid bare before me.

To the right, quite clearly, I can see Madh Island with slanting palm trees atop it like little antennae. To the left, the rock beach of Versova and if I really strain my eyes to the limit, I can see The Two Towers of the Bandra Worli Sea Link, about as tall as the tip of my finger, separated by a millimeter. They are in reality, about as tall as the Pyramids of Giza or the London Eye or a 45-story building. As I said, on my fingertip. Thinking about these dimensions, my eyes wander to the horizon. The sun's rays glisten on it like drops of gold. The sun itself is, however, hidden behind moderately dense stratocirrus clouds. Exactly four chinks in Orion's carpet let four very very faint rainbows peek in on me and lose their way to the sea as they do so. The horizon itself is so vast. It stretches almost 178 degrees around me. It's like Nature is trying to intimidate me with her enormity. With a teeny bit of imagination, I can nearly see the curvature of the earth, and with a little more of that imagination, a teeny weeny speck on earth, which is me, realizes that it itself is falling backwards, piggybacking on the mass of rock and metal called earth. It is not the sun that falls forward, towards what we specks have so indignantly named "sunset".

As if to make a point, dozens of planes appear from lands unknown (Amreeka/phorin/Dilli, I'd like to imagine) and stick out their landing gear like sparrows sticking out their feet before landing at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Santa Cruz. They do, however, make sure they roar out their challenges to Mother Nature as they draw nearer. Just to make a point, you know. The occasional copter breaks the monotony. All of them, though larger than the Sea Link, could sit on the tip of my finger comfortably.

The Bay of Bombay lies sprawled at my feet, which are perched atop the balcony railing. Between my feet, people who cannot see me are being seen. Lovers coochy-cooing (it's not my fault they don't know I'm watching), shell-pickers looking more like they're picking up the fallen pieces of their life after the terror, and… (Oh goody!) horsies galloping down the beach!

I can nearly hear the sighs of the Ocean as the Wind assaults him with increasingly violent blows. The Ocean takes it into his stride and remains calm near the horizon, but as the Wind chases them to the shore, the Ocean's crested Silver Surfers lose balance and fall, shrieking, all over the shore, arms spread out, only to be dragged by their own weight, back again to the realm of the angry Wind. It's a battle that the Ocean has never won and for the sake of appreciative humans like me, let the show go on.

Crows pick their way along the beach, sniveling out munchies from the sand. We humans are so much the same. We are slightly more intelligent crows, trying to snivel out personal gains from the arms of Mother Nature. (The wind rocks the boats from Versova Fishing Village next door as the sun glints on pylons at Madh Island). The power to speak, share and analyze has made us cocky. Mankind has taken the liberty to call the world his own and is proud of it. Truth is, our race is just a speck. And every individual, every life, every joy, every sorrow and every kiss shared by lovers on the rocks of Versova Beach is just so insignificant.

All that we can do is to realize that we are small. Yes, we have exceptional powers when compared to clams or parakeets or sloths, but we are not larger than Nature herself. Nature and the Universe are two endless entities. There is a vastness just beyond sight that we humans choose to ignore, in exchange for a feeling of supremacy. When Nature decides to reveal herself to us, we are intimidated. And we can do nothing but accept how tiny we are.

Here's an exercise you could take up now online. Search for your home on WikiMapia. Find your building and your parking lot. Do it once again if you have already done so earlier; it's worth the trouble. Now, bring your house to the centre crosshairs and zoom out, one step by another. Zoom out till you can see the Arabian Sea (for Mumbaikars) or the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific. Now look for the cross hairs. Can you see your parking lot now? The car that your dad is so proud to own... Can you see it?

It is time man grasps the enormity of the responsibility he has been given… To take care of such an enormous world. It is no mean task, yet he has been entrusted with it by the Universe.

Let's do our duty and move away from mundane fear and day-to-day politics. The Universe is waiting for you with open arms. Go embrace it.

PS: Such a way of life really works for everyone if they want it to, so get that raised eyebrow of yours back down.