Rock On!!

A lonely road, dark, lovely and deep, right through the dense forest (Hope Frost doesn’t turn in his grave) near Kunnamangalam. Just me and my bike, cruising and hoping against hope to reach NIT Calicut in time. The day was just like the video of Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life…”, rushing to make it for a concert. Parikrama was scheduled to perform for the Cult Fest of NIT, Ragam ’06… (For the uninitiated, NIT is the premier engineering college in Kerala, and stands for the National Institute of Technology, formerly known as REC).

A quick look at my watch shows 8:15… the show was supposed to start at 7:30 but then there’s the clock adjustment called IST – Indian Stretchable Time (Similar to DST in the US, but this is universally applicable). I pull up at the campus soon enough, only to be interrogated by the Police there… (they think I’m some terrorist hell-bent on screwing the show…), after explaining that I mean no harm and I’m just there to have fun, they let me through….

5 minutes and 75 rupees later, I’m at the Open Air Theater and the rest is history… the show was fuckin amazing… all the rock classics.. loads of weed, crazy guitar leads and thumping bass from the drums! Sadly though, I came late and ended up stuck at one corner while my friends were rocking on center stage! One of my friends was ranting about the chicks head-banging and singing along to rock classics, it gave him such a hard-on!

Seriously though, this was a true portal to another dimension, especially in a place like Kerala. For a couple of hours, I was in another place, a better one…. It’s happy to know that rock is alive and kicking here… sharing the venue with like-minded people was just amazing. Then, all of a sudden, we all were relentlessly thrown back into reality when a middle-aged professor came up on stage at the end of the show with his ears covered and spoke in a thick malayali accent… “Aull de shtoodents pleeaze gett aout of de venue from de leaft side!”…