The Threshold of Coolidity

Newsflash III: Supratik sends out an email announcing that Kapil the president of the Student Council of India (SCI) had asked him if we could put up a show for their Diwali celebrations. The email sounded tentative yet hopeful sounding yet another band member’s lack of closure on the band’s possible full stop. Well, Pauli got the mail, so did I and the next day lunch was initiated to discuss the matter. At lunch, which hardly went down (well it hardly went in not much of a chance of going down), Pauli and me toggled words back and forth which begged the other to say that “Yes we have it in us for one more show.” To be honest, the moment Supratik sent out the mail I think we both knew that we were gonna make this happen one way or the other. The only question was were we going to put together the bare minimum including our instrumentals and a couple of songs with supratik and me singing (which I bet we could still pull off a nice show with) or were we going to do this the way Antardhwani was capable of doing it, a way that does justice to everything we have become over the last 10 months? Knowing that we desperately needed lead singers to carry the show I pushed forth Raj’s name. Raj aka JD is my roommate and while listening to music on headphones he screams out all the time, and though this may prevent peer sleep he never takes a wrong note. I was more than happy to nominate him. At the same time, Pauli raised the question of another of my friends, Mathangi aka Tangy. Being from the same college, BITS Pilani, Supratik claimed that he had heard her voice and thought that she would be an excellent addition to the troupe. I was assigned the task of roping the newbees into our little band. The plan sounded like music to my ears!

Well Rajat dint need much roping in, he actually jumped over the rope with huge smiles and nods. Mathangi threw her voice out for me when I took my guitar over to her place and I barely managed to hide my excitement that my band was going to be powered by a very confident female voice. Supratik gave Kapil the green; the show which we knew could well be Antardhwani’s last performance was on!

Newsflash IV: Mainak dropped a bomb on us. His parents had come down to visit the US, were camped at his brothers place on the west coast, and around our November 1^st show date, he had to be with them to make a trip to have a family union with his brother’s to-be inlaws. The news was crushing, but at the same time the reason was too compelling to try to convince Mainak to change his mind. The deal was that while our first two shows lacked percussion, Mainak’s new Roland electronic percussion instrument had defined our sound and tempo at the DSE show, and taken our act to a whole new level. Without him anchoring the sound, we were again suspended in limbo.

Newsflash V: Anyesha’s school friend from Jamshedpur was visiting NIH from England, and was at her place during our last jam session with Sowmya. When we started playing sayonee he couldn’t help himself and insisted that we arrange a tabla for him to join in. A tabla was brought into the scene and Bheeshma churned out beats nothing short of pure genius. The kid had led a parallel life with respect to mine. Born in England, raised in Jam, packaged overseas again, crazy about music: We hit it off immediately. Once Mainak’s news was accepted as reality, Bheeshma was presented with the offer of joining us for the show, and though it would be a hectic ordeal it was the deal!

A dynamic song list was cooked up, which the new singers adjusted to in a matter of one practice session. Beer started playing his hand at drums and dholaks on his floor tom to boost up some of our numbers. We were on our way! Mathangi showed off her musical gift by picking up the pandero for Neele neele ambar, and I pushed forth my intentions of playing a Rabbi number; 1) coz Punjabi is always a crowd favorite 2) Rabbi’s compositions are the best music I have heard out of the Indian pop scene in forever 3) I wanted Raj to do something that most other singers wouldn’t be able to pull off.

Things sounded awesome in practice, we needed work though, but we were planning to pull off the most amazing show, with a revamped band, three days of practice, and we all knew that this might be Antardhwani signing off on stage, so it might as well be a signature performance!