living and loving the life of a photographer
05/Mar/2008
It happened one night in a Delhi pub
With nothing much to do after the mammoth exhibition opening, I decided to explore Delhi at leisure. As I was strolling around Connaught Place on a Sunday morning with a song on my lips—this cliché is necessary for the progress of this story, so please bear with me—somebody stopped me and enquired what song that was.
We thought about it for a few seconds and agreed that it was jana kahan hai mujhe by Swarathma, an upcoming folk/fusion band from Bangalore. It was a tune that infected me a couple of weeks ago when I first heard them play at the Fireflies Festival.
As it turned out, the guy who stopped me was the lead singer of a local band called Faridkot. He was one of the semi-finalists at the Radio City nationwide hunt for India's best Hindi band a couple of days before... and Swarathma won it! Apparently, NDTV aired interviews with them back-to-back with footage of the Vadehra exhibition. These were the two biggest non-political events happening in the capital on that day.
Even if you were stone deaf (and were watching NDTV with closed captioning), you could tell that Swarathma is the next big thing in Indian contemporary music. I learned that they were playing at Cafe Morrison that night, and went there to get to know them better.
In early 2006, I had the opportunity to meet photojournalist Claude Azoulay at his Paris residence. He was happy to have an audience as he had just released his book, François Mitterrand: Tenez-vous prêt, nous partons, a photo-biography of the late president's years in and out of office. Azoulay had befriended a young Mitterand during the latter's early years as a union activist. When Mitterand eventually became France's president, Azoulay was there by his side to document his 14-year tenure.
I was captivated by the idea that one could actually pursue a single subject for decades, and I wanted to do something on those lines in Bangalore. It seems to be the trend that Bangalore is emerging as centre for contemporary music. [Aside 1: Of course, Nagaland probably has more home-grown rockers. Since most Indians can't locate Nagaland on the map, Bangalore wins. Aside 2: Bangalore got Black Eyed Peas when Mumbai got Shakira. Enough said.] But where should I look in a world of one-hit wonders and get-rich-quick schemes where people investments are fraught with risk?
I briefly dabbled in the idea that I could document the growth of the Raghu Dixit Project. No doubt, a fantastic investment, but let's just say that when you catch a wave, you could either rise with it or fall flat on your face. It's a question of balance.
A slow and quiet Sunday evening at Cafe Morrison. The crowd was slowly settling down with their drink. Vasu Dixit gathered his boys after the sound check and told them to play freely and boldy as this was their first performance as a “professional” band. So the victory at Radio City was a big deal after all!
In the hours that followed, Swarathma rocked the crowd with their impassioned music and folks couldn't help let their emotions run wild. Forget ipods and MP3s. Standing 3 feet away from the sound source is the real thing. At that distance, everybody who ever dreamt of becoming a singer—and I'm sure that's a broad swathe of humanity—begins to realise that dream most intimately.
To think, I was whistling a tune in the morning and now here I was completely immersed in it. I'd like to believe that my chance encounters are something more than mere coincidence. Maybe a second chance to find that balance on a rising wave?
|