Rocking in the Free World

There are a lot of days that just go by with a whimper or with a very limited number of salient points that make it worth remembering for a long time to come. Thankfully, such days have almost been relegated to oblivion with a lot of interesting stuff happening in general that make each day worth its while.

But what happened on 14th December was something that was totally unexpected, and it seemed like one of the longest days of my life.

The day, thursday was supposed to be when I was to play guitars/bass at the office along with our ad-hoc ensemble for some major day that was to take place at the office, and the people at the office wanted some filler event during lunchtime and hence, we had to play to the crowd.

A rented bass guitar along with my trusty five year old Tansen gutar were my accomplices on stage, and our allocated one hour was cut down short because of a perfectionist sound engineer who spent twenty whole minutes tuning the drum mikes.

In any case, 40 minutes of stage footage was as good as it was going to get, and we did manage to play some stuff that enthralled the crowd, specially the ones that weren’t too bothered about technical specifics or the accuracy of the cover songs we played.

I discovered yet again that jamming with a really good violinist is superb, as was proven by our lead-guitarist in disguise.

Having played bass on stage for the first time was a great kick I would like to repeatedly experience again and again. Touchwood.

I had been under the assumption that the day couldn’t get any more eventful after the exciting afternoon, but providence was to dictate otherwise.

An auto strike that day resulted in movement being restricted, and I went to KR Market after the music show to drop off someone. Once my job was done, I suddenly realized that I was stuck at KR Market in the city without any money, since I had left my wallet at the office while I was about to head on stage.

A long walk singing ‘bittersweet symphony’ under the entire length of the KR Market fly-over ensued, and I jogged some bit too. Its not a stretch that I would particularly recommend for recreational activities, but since I hadn’t ever done it before, it was something new nevertheless.

After walking for a substantial distance, four km or maybe more, I managed to get into this bus (Route no.226 to Bidadi) after explaining to the conductor that my wallet had been nicked and that I had no money, but need to get off at RVCE right at the outset while climbing on the bus, and the conductor, named Nagaraj was kind enough to oblige. I hope I can do him a good turn someday. Only time will tell.

After returning from that exhausting but eventful journey back to my office, we were treated to a wonderful dance spectacle by Nirupama Rajendran and her husband, and since I had seen them twice before, it was yet again a very nice spectacle to behold.

Under the assumption that the day couldn’t last any longer, I was about to pack up and go home when my friends decided that we’d visit ‘Legends of Rock’ at Koramangala to celebrate the fact that the day was finally done.

The pub has a good ambience and I liked it more so because it was my first visit there. After being dropped off at my place, we had a nice drunken photo session and as tiredness managed to seep in finally, it was time to call it a night.

A hard but eventful day’s night it sure was!