Saturday, 19-December-2015, Nicco Park, Kolkata
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The gates will open only an hour later but you and a couple of friends are already in queue.
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It's not like you haven't heard the songs before. Rupam Islam & the pleading guitar in "Aro Ekbaar"; the soft instant nostalgia of KK going "Arrey yaaron" is already hardwired, note for note, into your brain. Innumerable repetitions on the I-Pod, the radio and re-unions are to blame. If only you had revised your study course material as many times.
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Yet you are excited. Unlike the "too cool for old rockstars"/"too cool for Bollywood songs" juntaa, you still retain a soft corner for memories, for songs that meant the world to you. The times may have passed those songs and their singers by, but you... those songs make you smile.
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The doors finally open and you find yourself not so much of a minority anymore. The Fossils fans are here, the KK fans are here... in their thousands, waving to the drone hovering above, bending over inch by inch the metal barriers that separate the Silver from the Gold class tickets.
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Then there are the quiet ones, not unlike yourself, here only for the music, overcoming their natural desire to stay out of the limelight, as is evident from their meditative poses as they wait for the stage to be taken over.
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And when it is, everything else ceases to exist. The guitars of the Fossils do the talking, the coaxing, the screaming, the philosophizing. Rupam plays the Pied Piper leading the masses down familiar paths of hope, rage and redemption. "Ekla Ghar", "Bishakto Manush", "Hasnuhana" course through your veins, a common drug injected from the speaker stacks.
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An hour or so of Fossils' Bong style emotional manipulation later, KK takes over and the tragic power of "Tadap tadap ke" also overpowers. Emotional manipulation, you discover, is just as effective in Hindi. The piano on stage tinkles into "O meri jaan" and the crowd joins in, together but each wrapped deep in their own interpretation of the song.
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The final song you hear before stepping out into a (relatively) cold Kolkata winter night is about the fleeting moment. "Pal", an all time KK classic, nearly 20 years old but always fresh, especially coming from the very man who sang it.
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Live. A word with more than a tinge of magic to it. All the I-Pods and Boses of the world aim to recreate a perfect sound recorded in tomb like studios. What they lose in their quest for purity is the buzz, the hum of the audience as it latches on to the floating melody, the unheard but unmistakable chorus of shared sentiments.
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As KK sings in his divine voice about memory's foggy trails, never to be re-experienced in quite the same manner ever again, you dwell in the moment, thankful to whoever deserves the credit for this nearly supernatural force called music. An ocean of feelings beckons you to explore, all in this little boat called a tune.
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