Total Siyapaa

two

Edinburg was enjoying a good summer. The sun was boisterous, even generous, shining on for hours at a stretch without a hint of rain overhead. It was the kind of weather that encouraged girls to wear something small and pretty and the boys to put on a pair of shorts and dress them up with flip-flops.

Aasha walked past shop windows that were decked up with potted peonies and daisies, a riot of pink, yellow and white. There was a hint of music and poetry floating in the air, tickling her nostrils and caressing her hair. Despite her earlier irritation, she could feel herself relax; by the end of the assignment, she knew she’d fall in love with this place.

“This is a big deal,” Jenny had mentioned at the briefing as she distributed the festival programme, the same one she had presented to Aasha in the pink-purple folder. Jeff reached forward to grab it, as did Subir, her co-anchor on the show, passing copies along to the show director, Mandy, and coordinator, Feroz.

“It’s the first time the festival is hosting such a large South Asian contingent. I thought it deserved a showcase – maybe even the whole hour dedicated to the festival; something on the lines of a behind-the-scenes or a making-of-the-festival kind of a segment, but with a South Asian angle for our viewers.

Subir and Feroz will handle the back end, here. Source the music, talk to the music companies, scour iTunes, find any interesting backstories you can. Aasha and Jeff will get the footage we need. Talk to the organizers, artistes, fans, anyone else who’s relevant. Make it interesting. Make it impressive.

Any questions?”

Aasha checked into her spacious room at The Caley. Jenny obviously knew how to bribe her employees in style, Aasha thought as she took in the sweeping view of the Edinburg Castle from her little balcony. With the sun tucked behind a turret, it threw a soft golden aura around the structure, giving it a touch of magic and mystery. It reminded her of the stories she’d read as a kid; they usually involved faraway mythical kingdoms, impossible quests, and impossibly brave heroes.

Aasha took a deep breath and held on to the intricately carved wrought iron railings of the balcony. The soft late morning breeze ran through her silky black hair and danced around. She allowed herself a small smile as she stood still. Everything about this place was reeling her in – the view outside, the large, warm tub (with pretty smelling bubbles and prettier candles) inside. What was a girl to do but give in?

As Aasha stepped into the bubbling warmth, she felt her body instantly relax; the knots that had developed over the last four days were slowly dissolving in this peppermint and vanilla concoction. She let her head rest against the tub and closed her eyes; she had a couple of hours to herself and she was going to make the most of them.

Aasha was not particularly gifted when it came to music, and like many things in her life the blame lay squarely with her parents. As a kid, Aasha was made to stand at gatherings and sing or recite poems she had learned in school or Indian ones her father taught her – poems no adult understood or cared for.

“Aasha, beta, come sing Aunty a song!” her parents would urge with great enthusiasm. “Aasha, beta, recite that poem you learned last week for Uncle!”

There she stood in her frilly, stiff frock, with a neat bow behind, her hands clasped together, singing Bollywood hits, or reciting ancient poems, in front of an indifferent crowd. After each rendition, the adults who were polite enough to pay attention doled out fake praise, even as they secretly hoped the pushy Punjabi mother would call off the cute croaking child. Others, less polite but more honest, stared at her with lingering distaste, like she was chutney gone bad.

Aasha hated it. As she got older, she promised herself she’d have nothing to do with music or poetry, even if her life depended on it.

Her parents never saw it that way though. They spent a great amount of time and energy recording each performance.

“When Aasha has a family of her own, we will show them what a talent she was! Look at the applause she is getting”

“Haan bhai, even Mrs. Sharma was saying our Aasha is a most gifted child, and everyone knows Mrs. Sharma doesn’t give compliments like that easily.”

The videotapes had accumulated in a dusty box for years. In fact at one point, so much time had lapsed since the tapes were mentioned, Aasha dared to believe they were well-forgotten. That was till the day her brother came totting about a bunch of converted-from-VCRs CDs.

“Don’t you worry, beta, we’ll never let your childhood ka talent go to waste,” her father said with great pride. “I arranged for all those old tapes to be converted. Now we can watch them whenever we feel like. Which one should we start with? Aasha? Beta, kaunse wale se start karna hai?’”

Those CDs could bring a festival like this to its knees, she thought wrapping the spring jacket around herself as she stepped off the kerb to cross the street. She had arranged to meet with Jeff at the little bistro across the road for a quick working lunch. She was five minutes late. Her time in the tub had been put to good use; she had worked through her issues and had arrived at a solution: she’d complete this project, and yeah, she’d do a great job with it, then she’d issue Jenny an ultimatum: Move me or I’m moving.

Jeff was nowhere to be seen so Aasha found them a cosy corner table for two. The table itself was round, like a garden table, and was covered in a white lace tablecloth. It held a potted orange plant along with a salt and pepper shaker and a bottle of olive oil. It was, Aasha thought to herself, all very quaint. Soft piano notes came floating out from one of the many open windows along the street, probably a rehearsal underway. Aasha ordered a beer for herself and fired up her iPad to take a look at the festival programme and performing artistes. There were two lists – the actual list and her list; all the artistes vs. artistes from the Subcontinent, the festival vs. her work.

“Sorry, sorry am late!” Jeff called out to her ten minutes later, pulling her attention from the screen. Jeff had his hands full. Slowly he set about arranging his equipment, which was previously slung across his shoulders, on the floor, against the wall. He smoothened out his wrinkled forest green shirt but in vain. Aasha wasn’t surprised to see him in his trademark khaki cargo pants; each pocket was stuffed with work-related titbits – wires, batteries, SD cards, pen drives, super glue, and other last-minute fixes.

“Man! Luxury looks good on you, Aasha,” he quipped with a kind smile once he had settled down. Clearly he didn’t miss her flushed but relaxed complexion. “So I guess your room had the ridiculous tub as well, eh?” He reached out for her glass of beer and took a generous gulp, moving out of her reach as he did so.

“Sorry I’m late,” he offered once again as he set down her now-drained beer glass. “I kind of fell asleep. You know how it is with hotel pillows. Have you ordered already?”

“Would I dare order without you? I mean look at what happened to my beer,” she replied cheekily. Jeff snorted in return. “Good, I’m starving. Let’s get some food on this table.”

“How is this table even standing? And how are you not a cholesterol bomb yet?” she asked him over a mouthful. “This is ridiculous Jeff!”

“Ridiculously good! Stop talking and keep eating. Trust me it’s going to be a long day; I’d rather face it with a full stomach.” Jeff dug into a portion of his apple and arugula salad, alternating the green spoonfuls with generous portions of lasagne, grilled vegetables, mushrooms, garlic bread and French fries. Each bite was accompanied by gulps of beer, this time his own and not Aasha’s. In contrast, Aasha’s roast chicken sandwich and glass of lemonade seemed like a sparse meal.

“So, who do we have first up?”

Aasha had just taken a big bite of her sandwich so she waited to swallow the bite before answering, “The Crashing Waves Collective. I’ve interviewed them before. They have an amazing story. I think you’ll like them.”

“Really?” Jeff asked, except it came out sounding more like ‘weally’ thanks to all the lettuce blocking the words. He chewed his food quickly, ignoring Aasha’s crackle of laughter. “Who are they? And what kind of music do they make?”

“I interviewed them last year at the London Jazz Festival,” she told him. “They were performing at Ronnie Scott’s.”

“Holy moly!”

“Yeah, and they lived up to it too. They are two brothers, from Sri Lanka,” she took a sip of her lemonade remembering the two slight young men with the most polite manners she had ever come across. “They have an incredible story: they lost everything, including family, during the Asian Tsunami. They were in their early teens at the time,” Aasha told a now-attentive Jeff.

“For a while they bounced around from camp to camp till they were transported to a centre in Australia.

During the interview, Aravinda, the elder brother, admitted they really struggled in the early days. I guess it was more like PTSD, that and severe cultural alienation.”

But Australia was also where their story found a new narrative. It was where they were introduced to Jazz.

“They had a young and engaging therapist. She had tried to get through to the two boys for weeks but they wouldn’t speak. Finally she used music to draw them out of their shell. Romesh, the younger one, told me she tried a number of musical styles and nothing really worked till the day she played some Jazz – Miles Davis, it was. And that was it. It was the first time the brothers communicated with a staff member.”

Aasha had enjoyed talking to them; she was grateful to them for sharing their moving story. And she really looked forward to seeing them again.

“From there on they found their way back through Jazz. They’ve been performing together now for about four years, and their first song – they always start with it, is called Belinda’s Chasing Blues; it’s about that young therapist.”

Neither Jeff nor Aasha said anything when she finished the story. The both looked off at the horizon, lost in their own thoughts for a while.

“This is why I love this job,” Jeff said quietly, breaking the silence. “You get to meet some exceptional people and then you get to meet them again and again. It’s like I said, Aasha, best job in the world!”

She smiled back in response. Sometimes, it really was a rewarding job. She stole a quick glance at the street clock before rechecking her schedule.

“We need to wrap this up, Jeff. We’re meeting the media liaison officer – Duncan McIntyre, in fifteen minutes.”

“McIntyre? I met the guy last year when I was here and the two years before that as well. He is a pretty cool guy. You’ll like him. He always gives answers.

Besides this is his eighth season here. He literally knows the festival like the back of his hand.”

“Welcome Ms. Singh,” Duncan McIntyre offered his hand to Aasha. He almost had to double down his six feet five frame to reach her outstretched hand. “Is this your first time here? At the festival?” he asked her, his unruly blond hair falling across his forehead and into his ice blue eyes.

“Please, call me Aasha,” she insisted before addressing the remainder of the question, “Yes, it is my first visit. I am very excited about the programme. And you know my colleague, Jeff Mars.”

“Jeff, welcome back. Always good to have friends return to us!”

Duncan had a very easygoing vibe about him. Aasha could see why people gravitated towards him. He was dressed in khakis and a crisp white shirt, but he wore them with an edgy attitude – there was definitely a little rocker in the mix of things. He turned back to address Aasha, “If you’ll follow me, I’ll walk you through all the significant bits of the festival, and I’ll try to answer any questions you may have along the way. I’m dropping you off with The Crashing Waves Collective, right?

Aasha stepped in line, matching his pace. Jeff was right behind her. “Yes, that’s right. I’ve interviewed them before, actually. They are a talented duo.”

“Yeah, we believe so. And great lads to share a pint with too.”

Duncan introduced Aasha and Jeff to the inner workings of the festival – the various practice rooms, sharing histories and trivia, as well as old hands, people who had been with the festival since conception. Jeff kept the camera running all through the exchange.

Keeping Jeff’s advice in mind, Aasha didn’t waste any opportunity. “So, Duncan, since we are on camera, tell us about the surge in artistes from the Subcontinent at this year’s festival. Was it by design?”

Aasha couldn’t help but notice Duncan’s ease with the camera. He clearly had enough experience to understand camera angles and light. He held his body just right. He would translate really well on screen.

“It was something that just happened to be honest,” he said with a slight shrug. His eyes twinkled and he had an easy smile. Yes, there was no doubt he’d look good in the capsule. “I mean, we didn’t sit down and say all right this year let’s have a record number of artistes from this region of the world,” he continued as they navigated a beautiful corridor with mosaic murals on either side. “We wanted great music on display at the festival and we went about assembling a set that did just that.”

Jeff asked them to hold off on the conversation as he took a few quick shots of the passage way, the artwork, and the building interiors. These would be filler shots, barely a second or two long in the final product, but they would give that touch of authenticity to the story.

While Jeff was busy, Duncan made small talk, sharing ghost stories (“Come on, Aasha, every half-decent cultural festival in this part of the world has a resident haunting they are proud of; we do too!”) and his cigarettes with Aasha. He also extended an invitation for evening drinks at his favourite pub. “You’ll get to meet some of the other artistes there as well. It’s a great environment.”

When Jeff was done, he turned his attention back to Duncan and they resumed from where they had stopped.

“If people still want an answer to why we have a large concentration to artistes with roots in the Subcontinent this year,” he continued once they resumed the walk, “Well, we offer two options for that: it’s a coincidence or it’s an indication of a rich musical history. Personally, I believe it to be a bit of both.”

As they got closer to the Hub, where The Crashing Waves Collective were to perform later that day, their time together was drawing to an end. Aasha took the opportunity to ask Duncan one last question; it was a question she would repeat a number of times over the next few days, “Duncan, if there’s one South Asian artiste here you’d recommend, if there had to be just the one, who would it be?”

“Just one?” he asked, his darker eyebrows bunching up and hiding in his blond curls. She could see him thinking, the names churning around in his head, one after the other. And just when she thought he was going to back off from the challenge, his expression changed.

“We have some exceptional talent at display here. But if you put a gun to my head, there is this one guy – Aman Ali,” he pulled up a profile of a good-looking young guy on his tablet. “The kid’s from London, but originally from the Subcontinent. He is doing very interesting things with his music; I’d recommend him.”

three

Aman took a deep breath before he flashed his trademark boyish smile at the audience, all of whom were on their feet, applauding. Over the last eight months, Aman had received a fair amount of adulation, but this was a slightly different scale. This was overwhelming.

He clutched his guitar with his left hand, holding it suspended, slightly above the floor, as he thanked the accompanying musicians on the stage with him. As they took a bow, he did too. He then held out his right hand and waved to the crowd. This single glorious moment alone, he realized, made up for the colossal stress-ball of a year he had waded through to get here.

“Thank you!” he called out. His voice was surprisingly steady despite the flurry of emotions coursing through him. He was filled with a surge of hope and confidence; but there was also a hint of relief twirled around it. Music had always been a part of him, now he could be a part of music too.

His story was meant to have a very different ending. Aman had been on the fast-track before he deviated from the plan – one that involved a new Masters degree and a shiny corporate job. It was understood that he’d spend the next two years climbing the corporate ladder, establishing himself in the industry, and once he did, his parents would find him a wonderful Pakistani bride to settle down with. This would be followed with the social standard of two kids, fancy car and big house – a fairly acceptable happily ever after, if there ever was one. His parents were of a liberal tilt, of course. There would be no village girl for their Aman. No, they would find him a lovely foreign-educated Pakistani girl – a lovely foreign-educated Punjabi Pakistani girl. After all, Aman deserved the best.

The Ali family had relocated from Lahore to Vancouver when Aman was eight years old. They left their old crumbling family home, one they shared with a large extended family, to start over on the other side of the world.

In Lahore, Ashraf Ali was a bank clerk. It was a good, respectable job, but it wasn’t enough to sustain his brood of eight.

“Come to Canada. There are many options; the kids will have opportunities to do anything they like. What will you do in Pakistan? It will take you another ten-fifteen years to get to a good post. And till then?” his second cousin Abdul had said to him during one of his visits home. “I’ll help you with the papers, aap sirf haan bolo.”

It hadn’t been an easy decision to make, and it hadn’t been an easy move to make. The cold, the isolation, the culture, had jolted the family more than they expected. But Aman took on this new life as an adventure. He adapted to the alien environment with great ease. Even when his parents and older siblings struggled to find an acceptable kebab house, Aman and his younger sister Zara were wolfing down unfamiliar foods like cheeseburgers and hot dogs.

To begin with, both Ashraf and his wife worked in his cousin’s little restaurant – Badshah. Ashraf also did a morning shift at a local petrol pump to supplement the family income. It took four long years but the Ali family finally set up their own ethnic grocery store specializing in Pakistani, Indian, Sri Lankan and West African ingredients.

The store, Ashraf & Sons, was a runaway success. The family now owned a chain, including two across the border in America. The ‘Masala Empire’, as it was dubbed in a feature by The Vancouver Sun a few years ago, was now headed by Aman’s eldest brother.

As their financial situation improved, Ashraf grew adamant that his children study, and study well. His two oldest kids were already getting involved in the store, but he wanted the others to have the opportunity to be doctors or engineers or lawyers.

The day Aman got his acceptance letter from Oxford to study Economics had been a very special day for Ashraf. In fact the whole family had been euphoric. And very Punjabi.

“Beta! Tu ne izzat badha di!”

“Shabash, beta! Shabash! I’m going to call everyone in Pakistan to tell them our Aman is going to England! To Oxford. Allah ka lakh, lakh shukar hai.”

It was exactly the opposite reaction of what he had received eight months ago, after he’d received his Masters degree, and before he’d started on his musical journey. He had held his job offer in one hand as he shared his new plan with the family over an excruciatingly long Skype call.

“I don’t want to work in an MNC. I want to make music. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m taking the year off to see if I can do something with it. If I can’t, I’ll go back to Economics. But I don’t want to go through life without even trying.”

His parents, and his father in particular, had balked at the idea.

“You’ve worked so hard for your degree, why throw it all away, Aman? You could really make something of yourself here. Are you ready to let it all go on a childish whim?” he had argued.

Aman could almost see his father pacing around in that neat living room in Vancouver, trying to find some comfort in the frantic, repetitive action, while his mother tried to calm him down.

“We left Lahore so that you kids could enjoy opportunities we never had,” he had continued, “and now you want to waste it on music? Beta, you have a gift, but it’s not this gaana-bajaana; it’s your brain. The sooner you realize this, the better it will be for all of us.”

“Socho, Aman, who will want to marry a musician? Most of them end up … playing on some dirty street corner, performing for cents. No, Aman, that will not be you. Absolutely not,” his mother had added, her voice wobbling with an endless stream of tears.

Aman had spent the rest of the evening staring at a painting of old Lahore that his parents had given him before he moved to London. The watercolour, a replica of a painting by Dr. Anwar, portrayed a typical Lahore bazaar. The grand old structures stood stoically as Lahore’s chaos unravelled below them – tongas, cycles, rickshaws, strays, men, women, children, wares, fruits, stalls, all managed to squeeze into the frame. Aman barely remembered what that life had been like. They had returned to Lahore only once – to see his Badi Ammi, his aunt, who had stage four lung cancer. He only remembered flashes now, and what he saw in the movies, or what he heard from his parents.

He remembered the rickshaws and their motors that sounded so much like farts; he remembered walking through a crowded market, clutching his mother’s hand with an iron grip; he remembered colours, bright ones like orange and green; he remembered aromas of foods he had now forgotten; he remembered running around barefoot with cousins and friends; he remembered eating mangoes. But that was all. He wondered where they’d all be, where he’d be, if they had never left.

The words had stung Aman. Of course, he had been prepared for a parental showdown, but there had been a tiny part of him that remained hopeful of convincing them. That hadn’t happened.

His music was a representation of his story – it was Pakistani and it was Western. No one part could stand alone without the other. He was a sum of two identities, and like him his music was a little bit Sufi and a little bit Jazz, and the two styles did amazing things together. He was unsure of mainstream success, but he knew there were pockets, particularly those with connections to the Indian Subcontinent, that would understand and appreciate his music.

So far he was doing well for himself. He was constantly performing, drawing a bigger and more diverse crowd than he had accounted for. His growing success had also eased the tension between him and the family. After his parents heard his music, and were reassured that he’d never be a busker, they had relented. A fragile peace process was underway, and he was determined to fix things between them, fix them without having to sacrifice the only passion he had.

Aman picked up a bottle of water as he made his way to the vanity van, draining it all in one go. He should have picked up another one, he thought as he discarded the empty one into a rubbish bin. It was a cool evening but he was soaked to the bone. His shirt was stuck to his back and his brow was dripping.

“That was great man!” Dominic, his festival man Friday, said falling into step with Aman. He magically produced another chilled bottle of water. “Here, drink up. You need to keep hydrating at gigs like this. That’s the secret: hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.”

“It was. It felt great. What a crazy rush!”

“You bet. Now drink.” Dominic had attached himself to Aman since he arrived in Edinburg four days ago. It was his job of course, but Dominic had taken a bit of getting used to. The man was a ball of energy, launching into conversation right off the bat.

“I’ve been assigned to you, mate. Get used to this ugly mug. Where you go, I go. What you need, I’ll get, or try to get. I’m the last thing you’ll see at night and the first every morning. Well, almost. But yeah.”

It hadn’t been love at first sight for the two: the first day Aman wanted to punch the chatty and obnoxious Dominic in the face, maybe take out the nose and a couple of teeth with it; the second day they got drunk at The Headless Horseman, a corner pub because alcohol was the only way Aman could tolerate Dominic’s non-stop energy. He wished to God the man had a pause button. On the third day Dominic brought along a miracle hangover cure, a secret family recipe, and became a friend for life.

Right now he was very glad for Dominic’s presence. It meant there was someone to make the decisions and issue instructions. All he had to do was follow. The adrenalin from his back-to-back performances was now wearing off and the exhaustion, a by-product of the anxiety and pressure leading up to them, was finally beginning to creep up on him, crawling up from his toes, to his knees, to his hip bone, his ribs and finally anchoring on his shoulders.

Hopefully those directions led him to a plate of hot food – what he would do for a mutton biryani right now – followed by a warm bed with extra-fluffy cushions. Surely Dominic could arrange for something similar. Hell, Aman would settle for a juicy burger and an armchair right now.

“It should last about thirty minutes, not more,” Dominic’s deep voice pulled Aman out of his own head and back into the present.

“I have the questions here, so you can go through them before the reporter arrives. You think …”

“What?” Aman interrupted Dominic. Having missed the first part of the conversation, his face scrunched up in complete confusion, “What are you talking about?”

“The interview … your interview with South Asia Hour”

“Interview … right now?” Aman was feeling a mix of excitement – he still had to get used to the whole giving interviews process, and absolute exhaustion, as he walked into his vanity van.

He placed his guitar on the table, securing the rich brown leather strap well behind the edge so that it wasn’t dangling. As he made towards the armchair on the other side, he pulled off his sweat-soaked black shirt and tossed it on the floor, before sinking into the soft cushioned armchair.

“I’m wiped out man. Can’t we push it a little bit? Let me take a quick nap and we’ll go in an hour.”

“There’s no time later buddy. I’m sorry. If you want, I’ll buy you fifteen more minutes to freshen up. But that’s it.”

“Fine,” Aman sighed. His legs felt like jelly at the moment and it was a struggle to just put on a fresh T-shirt. Once he was dressed, he reached for an apple on the table and took a big juicy bite.

“Think I can get some real food before this thing?” he asked. His last meal had been a masala omelette (with extra tomatoes and a side of grilled mushrooms) earlier that morning; he had skipped lunch, thanks to a nervous stomach, which meant there was a hungry old lion growling and snarling in his belly right now.

But all the lion got was a lean turkey and lettuce sandwich, and a Coke – a far cry from the biryani he was craving.

“You better not be mumbling at me in foreign,” Dominic said when he caught Aman cursing under his breath.” I could have bought you a breakfast bar. Or a tofu burger. Be grateful.”

“It’s Punjabi, and if you ever bother bringing me that healthy crap, I will have to poison that little flask that is so poorly hidden in your coat pocket.” Dominic simply offered Aman a wide grin in return. He patted his right pocket, just to make sure it was safe, before he urged Aman to finish up.

“So where is this interview set up?” Aman asked over the last mouthful; he set about inhaling every last crumb clinging to the plastic wrap. Aman was still hungry. He was still exhausted. And he was about to give his first major interview. This would either go really, really well, or it was going to blow up in his face.

“We’re doing it at a cafe across the street. It’s a nice setting and if we’re lucky some people might even recognize you from earlier today. A little fan action never hurt anybody.”