my maiden gig!!

it was like a dream come true. . to see people headbanging listening to our music and . . . moshing. . its the biggest compliment any band can get. . . the more aggressive you get em, the better you are.

anyways. . in the end, what i feel is that . . it paid off man. . traveling in a freaking bus from pimpri to ghorpdi every time for jamming, . . trying to make my band mates understand the huge distance involved and telling em the reasons for my abscence from the jamming sessions on many occasions. .

the credit goes to everyone in the band. . specially bissy. . biswodeep the guitarist and amol the vocalist for putting the band together. . for calling up everyone and showing so much concern for anything and everything associated with the band . .

and i was so fucking elated to see a guy commenting in the rock in pune thread that godstonetrip deserved to win . . even if its a comment by a single guy, but thats more than enough to make us happy. . at least some people out there liked our music. . more than the awards, being appreciated by our listeners is what we care about.

thanks. for everything.

Finally the search ends.

It was in the middle of the technical festival that i realized i had fallen in love. . at the same time cupid was doing something to the person i was falling in love with, and what happens next? we are committed.

I have had a long history with this girl . . I have been in talking terms with her right from the start of the college. We didn't talk much back then, but passed smiles casually, not aware that couple of years later we would be madly in love with each other.

She used to hang out with people who were supposedly bad bunch of guys. And I absolutely hated that part. And I somehow had convinced myself that those were the traits of the sluttiness.

Yes I hated her. Specially after the previous year technical festival due to the incident involving me and her. It happened that we had stayed late night at the college auditorium as we were running out of time for the stage decoration. I was also there. SO was she.

I entered the hall and she made faces the moment i was looking towards her direction. Now I could have kept quiet and ignored her. But the hatred inside made me shout at her. . "What you making faces at?" And she retorted with an equal if not more intensity or rather hatred. . "Its my face. . I do what i want to . . " And I pushed off from there afterwards. . . with even more hatred . . . hatred amplified like a differential voltage gets amplified across the open loop op - amps. (had to sound like a budding engineer. . sorry folks. . . )

And so the zion 2008 happened. I had asked Ripple, the students coordinator, to make me the head of the campaigning department. He did that. And by the most amazing luck or bad luck whatever you call it, she was my partner. She was also assigned the same portfolio.

I was so damn apprehensive at the first working day for the campaigning. I approached her and started talking about some official work to be done . . as if nothing had happened in the past and that we were friends. She also behaved not her normal self for a change and was receptive to what i said. Eventually we made announcements in various classes. And that was the day when I surreptitiously got hold of her number. . !!

And the story goes on till this very moment. Every day is a new day for us. Every second that passes by makes me realise how much I love her and how life has changed since her arrival. How I have started making an attempt to be a better person. . a better human being and more importantly, a better lover.

She is still not convinced that I love her and she occasionally states that I would leave her one day. When I say"I love you!!" She just gives back a smile and gently scolds me asking not to lie. I insist. She insists back. And I give up.

We have spent so much time together. She comes here and we stay together for almost 2 to 3 days and nights. Yet at the time she starts going back, I feel she had just arrived and that I ought to stop her from going away from me.

She is more practical, more light headed and has a sense of judgment. . some attributes that I perhaps lack. . or rather I am not good at.

Its a pity that My parents are against my marriage to someone outside the caste. I am not a selfish guy. I acknowledge how much they have done for me. I also know about their skepticism about their eldest son falling in love with someone outside the caste. . just like the eldest daughter of our extended family did. I remember how hurt my father was when he heard of the news that munmun would be marrying someone who happens to be a Jain.

At her marriage, various people from our extended family approached me with warnings like. . "Son . . you have to carry forth the legacy of our clan" . . or "you better marry a brahmin" or "Dont shame us the way she has!!"

My mother has never been supportive of me talking to some girl. Its stupid but understandable. She has been married to a guy she never knew before and she expects me to do the same. Wonder if its too much to ask for . . .

I had a talk about it with my girl friend when we were talking about whats gonna happen in future. I put a rock on my heart and said I would marry the girl my dad wants me to. . cos if i don't, he would die. !!
No obviously that sounds like we are bound not to marry ever. . . that the possibility of our prospective alliance is zilch. . which I feel is not the case. But I have already said those words and yeah . . words are like arrows. . once you have set them free, you cant take it back.

So yeah . . as of now. I am in a big dilemma. A big, complex and irksome task awaits me. . to convince my parents about the free will to marriage. . but a bigger task awaits me. . to make her believe that what i said was just to discourage her from being too sure about the future. . to avoid making her believe that there is no other guy except me for her in the universe. Future is uncertain. I do not want her to live on this false notion . I love her. And if being honest means she would be mad at me, So be it.

My father just called me up and asked me if I had read his article. Just now. . I reckon he would never imagine I was in the middle of writing something so relevant to him , to me, and to the future of our family.

I so much wish, my parents had not been so caste biased!!

My uncle. . look at him. what happened to him ? He followed what he was asked to. He married a woman he never knew before and whose photo he saw that was reprocessed from some adobe photo shop shit. . Is he happy today ? I seriously doubt it. Yes, he has come on terms with the different situations our society has imposed over him. But somewhere deep down in his heart I am sure he has a sadness . . with the way things unfolded for him. I would refrain from divulging too much . Its his personal life and I have no rights of stating these self opinionated piece of writings in a blog.

On this note I would end.

Do give me some feedback. I am fucking confused.!

Last time i had mentioned to you about someone i met at french exam.
Its hight time that i lay some more light over this chapter of my life. she is someone i truly respect and cant even think of what i had thought earlier!

finally. . francais terminer!!

done with level 1 exam in French and i am quite happy with my performance. .

more important than the exam, it was the acquaintances that i made which might turn the course of events in pune for better in my life. . one guy is an agent in a leading call center who can get me job without much hassle in a call center. Pretty cool French he has got. . so i can take help from him with French as well.

The more important acquaintance was made with Mrs. *******. Sadly she is married and i am freaking disappointed with it. but we had a long chat today while traveling and it seems that we gel well. we are gonna meet over the cup of coffee and lets see how things develop. As for me, I definitely have fallen for her, head over heels, despite her marital status.

Sorry . . no pictures to illustrate. !!

French EXAM FINALLY!!

I have a french exam to take in another couple of hours. I thought it would be better to preserve my emotions in the safe hands of cyber space before it gets lost in the abyss of time.

Thanks to a friend of mine I managed to ameliorate my French just at the nick of time. I shouldn’t sound so confident, especially after not having worked as hard as I should have done to learn the language a bit better but I have certainly no idea where this uncalled confidence comes from!

I appreciate that friends help but she is over concerned about me – a fact that makes me uncomfortable with the entire deal. I think I am going to pass today. Not sure about listening comprehension though. . I can barely comprehend what the morons from the recorder blabber with such a high bit rate.

Rest when I come back from alliance de francais de pune.

Au Revoir !

I have a strong reason to write this edition of my blog. I have been through so many things, all compressed into a time span which is considerably short considering the number of incidents that have happened.

I would start off with the outing to law college road with Christian and friends. . Okay hold on. . Before that there is another big story I have to unravel. This is about music. It was a dream of mine to be in one of the head banging hard rock band and it seems to be getting realized day by day, thanks to orkut. Having said that I am not at all feeling lame or whatever. . Few people tend to make fun of orkut for every damned reason they can contrive of, which is a bit unfair to the impeccably carved out website. Anyways to continue with where I was, There was an add posted on orkut community, where they needed a bassist. I promptly replied to the sender and we fixed up a date and time to meet up. Since I am a beginner, I am sure they were disappointed at first, but when they insisted it hardly matters cos the idea here is to evolve as a band together, learning things as we move on. But I think that was just to soothe things up. WHY ELSE would they be on a look out for another bassist? I feel something fishy, but asking them directly about it would sound a bit impolite. I should mind my own business and shouldn’t really delve deep into their business. That is the reason I have associated myself with another band and they are into melodic death metal . . . a genre I am really not at all fond of but considering the circumstances, I have joined it. We are auditioning the guitarists and we in fact went to a guitarists place and he sounded pretty decent. Every Sunday I go to randheers place to jam and this is so cool. . In fact Sebastian was really surprised when he saw us jamming. Of course he claimed that the local bands back in Germany sound 100 times better but i have no qualms. . They are ahead of us in every aspect and music happens to be their forte. Beethoven was a bloody German what more do you expect?

And then we went to law college mocha which was equally fun. .Katrina, Christian , Jacqueline, eshaan, Sebastian, shraddha, me and some others had gone there and we had lots n lots of food and hookah. I remember being very happy that night, though I am unable to comprehend why I was so that night. We clicked some very nice pictures and I had my first joint that night. . was . . . err . cough cough. . not bad. .

And then the real thing I am writing this blog for. . I ATTENDED IRON MAIDEN SOMEWHERE BACK IN TIME 2008 in Mumbai. I had given up the idea of going to this concert, mainly because I didn’t know of anyone else from pune who would be going for this concert. So on 31sy January night I was quite passively listening to music on my computer while surfing net or something. . And then suddenly out of the blue I get this phone call from one of my high school friends, ritwiz, who asked me if I was coming or not. When I told him about my reluctance to go to the concert, he ensured that I would miss the concert by describing the number of friends he is coming with, and how nice all his friends are, and how they would meet up some of the other metal heads and how they would drink beer and alcohol that night and will have a gala time. This was the instant when I almost decided I would head for Mumbai immediately. I told him I would make an effort to reach their in time.

I gave my flat mate (ex) a call and he after some coaxing agreed to come to the railway station from where we would catch a bus to Mumbai. It was 12.30 am and I really wasn’t sure if we would make it. But I guess God himself didn’t want to deprive couple of metal heads from seeing their metal gods. So there was a bus waiting for us near the railway station. And it was pretty cheap too. And the bus dropped us right in front of the bandra kurla complex.

Nevertheless there we were in the dead of the night, no one to be seem in the vicinity and I was a bit skeptical if we would manage to meet up with ritwiz , who claimed to have reached Mumbai at 4 am. We walked for at least 5 kilometers that night, and when we didn’t find them , we decided to go to the station to fill ourselves up. I tried calling ritwiz 100 times in the meanwhile but couldn’t get through. . Low signal or something. I had the tastiest butter bun of my life in the train and awesome tea. We went to anupam’s relatives flat in kandivali and had rest. .set off for kurla at 10 am. Reached the station and I couldn’t muster up enough courage to board the train after looking at the monstrous crowd, the rickety compartment swollen with all kinds of people, and that’s when we decided to go to the complex in a bus. We had a long long journey from kandivali to kurla but at least we were sitting through out in the travel and that was a comforting part.In the middle of the journey I got a call from dad who is a in Hawaii right now for some international conference. He asked me about my where about and I told him I was in a bus. So he asked back if I was going to college in a bus or not. . and I lied !!

So we reached the venue and saw ritwiz and his friend ashwin. We talked a bit, and then met up with other friends. We very soon were on talking terms and infact indulged in abusing each other, which is kind of appreciable, considering we had met couple of hours back. I had breezer that afternoon. They drunk gin as well and insisted on me srinking that shit. I am glad I could handle this peer pressure successfully and refused. The entry started at 4.30 pm or something. They made us wait for so long. All the sound testing , mic testing , and shit like that. The opening band was nerve wreck and it actually wrecked our nerves. They were non descript, though they had come up with some of the melodic riffs but apart from that they were really not impressive at all. Then steve harris’ daughter came with her band and she sucked worse than the previous band. We were chanting like “Bring your daddy . . bla bla”. Though her guitarist was a shredder man . . real fast solos in virtually every song she sung.

And then to our big relief came parikrama. They are just phenomenal. I am their band. They are the desi band and need the support of us desis. I have made up my mind of buying their original stuff from now on. There was this guy infrnot of us who was like. . Maiden maiden every 5 minutes in a disgusting dialect. . Felt like taking his guts out from his anus. Yeah it’s sick I know. But he was in fact, way sicker.

We were inside on a 1k pass. . Which meant the stage was far off from where we were standing. Barricades were there to make us aware of the fact that we spent less than the bastards who were ahead of us. . but as maiden started we got violent, broke the barricades, and joined the idiots who had paid 700 more bucks to get the front row tickets. We joined them eventually and they must have realized their folly. Mind you we already had this idea about the breaking of the barricades and that’s the reason we opted out for a cheaper ticket.

Parikrama lifted our spirits and we came back to life after being subdued for so long. We got into groove, head banging and all . . and then came the gods. . they came 30 minutes after parikrama ceased to play. . . and from time to time they were showin us the teasers. . you know. . a small part of making their presence felt across the podium or something. . the background was covered with a black sheet, and it was in fact a huge poster of eddy, and they rolled themselves up in the background to change for the next poster. . and every poster was infact the album cover of the song maiden were singing. Despite being so old, the raw energy they exhibited was tremendous. It amazes me to see the 50 year olds jumping and kicking like teenagers. When they started off with their music, MANNN . . it was . . in one single word, most electrifying moment I have experienced in my life. No wonder they are considered the gods of metal. They deserve every bit of this title.

Hey man . . long time . . this time i have got lotta things to tell you . . they include. . an accusation of rape on us, party at our flat , bad exams. . and other exciting things. .
The day I was done with one of the exam, namely DC, I was freaking happy. . I came back only to see there was a huge party going on . . and you know what kind of a person I am . . a slight whiff of distraction and I am gone, only to return back to studies too late and regretting having gone . .

So was the party . . cool . .with lots and lots of people, lot of chics, lot of cool people. . and most importantly I really enjoyed it . . right from the pan cakes that christian made at our kitchen to the wine . . I dont drink alcohol mind you . .but for a day I shed my inhibitions with alcohol. . .I just had 5 or 6 ml of this . . so thats next to nothing if seen from a practical way . .

Anyways, it was pretty late . . around 1 am. . and the girls who had come didnt have any bike to go back on. So one of my friend named eeshan offered to drop them home. I thought of going to the station on our way back when we would be done with dropping them.
But eshan misinterpreted what I was trying to say and instead it was decided that we would leave them on our way from where they could catch a rickshaw for their home in koregaon park.

SO we left them at a place near the bus stand of our flat. ANd then off we went to the station and roamed around in the platform talking about the past and the various experieces we have been through. . and it was an enjoyable conversation to say the least.

And then sudenly one of our flat mate arnab calls me up and asks me if I am okay. . I said hell yeah I am absolutely fine . .then he said something that suggested someone has met some kind of accident and its kinda serious in nature. . . Its only after we came back to the flat that we realized what deep shit we were into.

The girls were seated in the auto rickshaw. . and from there on we assumed they would reach their place without any problem. But how wrong we were!~! The auto rickshaw driver turned out be some drunkard and under the influence of alcohol started talking all kind of lewd and lecherious stuff with the girls. As it was their first night alone, they got scared. They ran straight out of the rickshaw and to make the matter worse few men started following them. They rammed into some residential palce. . . inside a flat where 4 or 5 guys used to stay together. fortunately for them as well for us, they turned out to be bunch of nice gentlemen and they ensured theur safety till the other guys from our flat came there to console and comfort them.

Now we are couple of disgraced persons in the circle. . irresponsible. and eager to save petrol. We were innocent but it was the circumstance that made us appear like bunch guilty bastards. Some snaps from the party follow. .