The following few entries will be describing general craziness in my day-to-day for the last few of them...always culminating in post-competition exhaustion. For right now, I won't go into what the Competition is, that'll be taken care of in the next blog because it'll make a lot more sense and well frankly I'm a bit lazy at this moment :0\
So Wednesday at work, keeping in mind that this is the day before Thanksgiving when most have mentally checked out from their jobs or in fact have physically made the escape, I thought to myself surely this will be a nice slow quiet 7.5 hours which I can cruise by whilst doing nada. Um, never challenge fate is the lesson learned here because it decided to come bite me straight on my buttocks. Dang. Suffice it to say that I left work at 5, when HR told us we could all leave at 3 and had made plans to go to the grocery store.
As any intelligent person living in the States can tell you, never ever go to the grocery store the night before Thanksgiving. It's just pure stupid and you are very liable to beat someone senseless in an aisle with a package of stuffing mix somewhere along the way. Grocery rage is ugly. I frankly have avoided this trek because although I'm on a total "embracing the stripe" look, I don't think I could pull off inmate stripes. Just sayin'. But seriously, all you find up and down the food isles are folks looking slightly panicked and confused with a nice heaping helping of 'what the F' in their eyes, as if they can't figure out what they're doing there. Um buddy, you're wife or you forgot to get stuff for the big meal that you know is coming for the last year...you're an idiot is why you're presently scratching your head and consulting your phone with the list of things to buy (that are probably out of stock anyhow). There's a lot of routing of bodies from the potato section to the giblets case to the dessert counter while poor workers try to smile through the crazy. One old lady nearly mowed me down with her Power Scooter in order to get to the pie crusts shouting "out of my way" as she zoomed past. Had I not leaped into another poor hapless soul, I woulda been road kill...no really.
I was one of the few lucky ones who not only found a convenient parking spot, but was also able to score my very (small) list of food items then shoot into the self-pay line. Tops 20 minutes in and out where I thought it would take me about an hour. Oh also for those who read the snarky line above about those who are in the grocery store on that day being idiots...well I don't fall into that category simply because I found out that I had to make a few dishes at the last second (as in 2 hours before I was to leave work). I lay the blame squarely on my mothers shoulders and since she doesn't read my blog, I'm safe. If she finds out I wrote this, I will figure out who told her and find you and hurt you...just a warning.
This year isn't really different then prior ones, Thanksgiving always heralds in competition and therefore it means insanity x1000. I'm generally mentally prepared that it starts from Thursday but when big bro called on Tuesday night and said, hey there's a private concert at a friends house right near your place on Wednesday night and therefore you should come...well the brain kicks into overdrive trying to figure out how this is going to pan out. I planned to go home and take my time in packing for the next several days...that in itself was no easy thing but then add to it all the other items I would have to take and my head was doing a nice spinny thing. Also If any of you have ever attended a classical Indian music program, you realize that these things go onto the wee hours of the morning. My consciousness kept asking me with a tilt of a head and arching of an eyebrow 'hey Sherlock, where precisely do you have the time to do all these things?' I told it to stfu and plowed on ready to tackle the night.
I got home with every intention of getting at least half the stuff on my 'to-do' list done (pfft, yea right). What happened instead? I spotted my couch...It called to me...I answered the call...I sat...I stared...I zoned...I blocked everything else out for 2 hours...I 'woke up' when P came slamming into the house startling me out of the coma I was in. *sigh* What a waste of my time too. I just wonder why I keep shooting myself in the damn foot this way. Procrastination is one thing, this is a whole new level of moron-ism (that's a word now).
P got home looking like he too had almost been run over by a Power Scooter, or more like a bus and could barely keep his eyes open though he kept muttering about going to the program. I assured him that his ass was better off at home because his loud snoring would probably disturb the others while they were trying to listen to the music. He agreed and disappeared a scant 30 minutes later after hastily shoveling food into his mouth. I'm not sure if he even chewed. Oh well...
I called N, my cousin and def soul mate, and told her that she was going to come with me. Thank goodness girlfriend was down for it and fairly enthusiastically agreed to be my date. After consulting on what we would wear, I charged up my phone and headed to the bathroom. She was on time and we were off.
Side bar: So I asked my bro to call me and let me know when the program was going to start. He said he didn't know... :| okay. Then he said probably 8:30ish. I asked him to call me when he was about 20 minutes away and in that way I could arrive when he did. 8:30 came and went and I was left not very surprised that I received no call at all. I called him and he said in the sheepish voice that most recognize by now if you know him "oh shoot, I'm soooo sorry I forgot." Um...yeah no shocker there. By the time that convo happened it was already nearing on 9:30. Seriously bro, consume ginko...in copious amounts too.
So we N and I went to listen to Shakir Khan produce pure magic with his sitar. You can check him out here -----> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2DrC4wzvyw&feature=g-user-u He's the son of Ustad Shahid Parvez (this is him) ----------> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCK5Kp6ePyU&feature=g-all-u who I have also been very lucky to see/hear in concert as well as meet (in fact in the very concert where this last video was taped) and I was left spellbound as well as curious to see what his son would sound like. Bhai (older bro) said that he was really fantastic and that I would enjoy it. Even if Bhai doesn't have great memory he does however impeccable taste in music, I decided to go with his reassurances that the evening would be well worth it.
One funny thing about the sitar, it's featured in so many places, #1 being Hindi movies as background for sappy scenes or even (most prominently now adays) in USA commercials (you know, to add that 'mystical' touch), therefore the normal music aficionado probably doesn't really hear nor appreciate the sitar for what it is, an incredible instrument that is worthy of it's own platform, not to be some background nonsense to equal other nonsense. Having grown up in a musically inclined family and attending countless concerts of legendary artists listening to hour long raags which depict some time of day/night/season or invoking emotions within the soul due to a few notes being played...I mean wow...I have a much keener appreciation for this particular instrument. I even tried my hand at learning but realized my biceps didn't like that idea at all (nor my nails for that matter). So I have since then relegated my person to just being an avid appreciator of the art as opposed to the actual artist.
Anyhow, so we go to the program and have to figure out a maze of passages and secret code words to get up to our friends apartment (I think this is because he doesn't actually want people to come to his apartment) but once there in his fashionable abode, it's a small and intimate group of people we discover who are milling about with my family (of course) ever present and accounted for (however only the younger adults, not the older). I am introduced to Shakir (who I met before briefly during his fathers concert and I believe said something to the extent of "oh you're the son of _____ [Insert wrong artists name here]." Smooth Bina, real smooth. *smh* I'm sure he thought "moron" and so now I'm slightly praying for him NOT to remember how epically dumb I was. I don't think he did (yay)). My impression of this young man was that he was a great representative of the new generation of upcoming budding artists: fairly modern, relaxed and clearly in-tune with the times who also possessed mad skills but at the same time craving normalcy. No longer does this generation crave the bowing and scraping of their fathers era by devotees...they just want to be looked upon as a human and appreciated for their talent (while being fawned upon by hot women *wink*).
To say that it was a good concert would be an understatement. May be it was the small intimate group of folks there, may be it was the dimmed ambiance or the artist who was so young and talented but clearly in love with every string that was played, every fret that he ran his fingers over...or even the way he closed his eyes and fell into the music that wafted from the instrument he held cradled in his arms like a lover...whatever it was, I can assure you that it all came together beautifully and the experience was...magic.
The night was a rousing success and I found it to be rather poetic, an evening of music heralding in a whole weekend of the same. By the time we left with a round of warm hugs and goodbyes to our fellow music lovers, I was mentally ready for the oncoming challenges of the weekend which would include a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of fun and a lot of work. I thought mentally, bring it biatch!
Once home though, my body told me to shut the hell up cause whereas I could have been asleep by no later then 2am...I was wide awake till 4 bleedin' am stalking people on Facebook and blinking tiredly at the TV. Seriously, I was watching Meet Me in St. Louis. Just don't ask. And can someone please tell me what's wrong with me? Why am I so darn hyper sometimes? What in the world is my problem? I was perfectly aware of the upcoming storm (read that as "Storm Competition") and the mountain of work I had to do which included packing for Baltimore and then Thanksgiving dinner cooking so why the eff was I sitting on my bed singing "clang clang clang goes the trolley...".
Yea, so Wednesday...interesting day but that was just the beginning. I'll post a few more with wondrous details about the next 4 days that proceeded that one. Sheesh.
Oh also, for those of you who have NO idea of what a sitar looks like and didn't bother to click on the links above (which seriously you should cause those are darn awesome clips) here is a diagram of one and with descriptions of the parts:
No comments:
Post a Comment