The magic of Rahman

I am such a nut, that I totally forgot to blog about this very exciting experience of my life! Around 2-3 weeks back, I had the chance to go for the Intimates Concert by A. R. Rahman. Ah, what a treat that was! The music, the singing, the visual effects, it was just so stunning. It was my first concert ever, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Throughout, I was recording snippets and sending it on Whatsapp to Moo and rest of the friends and parents. They pretty much heard him live that ways.

Abhi, Nish and me had gotten the tickets around 3 months back and good that we did, because they were sold out within the week! The event was at Nokia theater in LA, which has just been re-named to Microsoft. Abhi works at Nokia/Microsoft for the phone division and has been strictly instructed to get us VIP seats next time. When we entered, we realized we were going to find a LOT of desis from San Diego State. But it was alright.

Somehow, in the whole deal, as usual I got wrangled in this weird situation. Prasad, a colleague, was going to be there with his wife, 2 kids and some friends. This guy CK that I hung out with some old friends had told me that he had really wanted to go but the tickets were sold off. Turned out, Prasad had to go to Kansas at the last moment with our bosses for a meeting. So I volunteered and got his ticket sold off to CK. Although I had told CK that the seats were pre-decided, he was kinda taken aback after he paid me and when I told him that he will have to sit with strangers, AND drive himself since Abhi and Nish were picking me up. *Awkward*. This was 2 days before the concert. On the day, Prasad emailed me if CK was still going, if not, he wanted it back because everyone had gotten their flights pre-poned. Now, I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I called CK and asked him if he was still going. Somehow, now that I was not going to hang out with him there, he seemed to be giving the ticket back quite eagerly. 😉 If you know what I mean. Phew. I am holding Prasad on gunpoint and have informed him that he owes me a lunch, because thanks to his son dancing in the aisle, they got spotted by the tour manager and GOT UPGRADED TO THE VIP SECTION!! He got to take pictures and shake Rahman’s hands!!! So jealous!

It was supposed to start at 8 pm, but it started at around 8.20, not too bad considering the Indian standard time followed elsewhere. The moment Rahman came on the stage, it was huge! Everyone was on their feet super excited, and screaming and clapping! But that was nothing compared to when the songs began. They played songs from Dil Se, Roza, Saathiya, Jab Tak Hai Jaan, Taal etc with a  mix of Tamil and Hindi. I don’t know a drop of Tamil but nothing stopped us from singing and dancing in our seats like crazy. They sang a lot of songs from their latest hit OK Kanmani and I had no idea that Southern Cali has so many Tamil people. I had conveniently assumed it to be a Gujju state. 😉

The nicest feature, next to Rahman singing of course, was this female dancer who was coming in for some songs and dancing  with a mix of contemporary and Kathak style. Visually it was incredibly stunning and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She was so graceful, compared to the ‘baby-goat-trying-to-stand-up’ kind of my limb movements. There was a piece where Rahman tried out creating music with this Wii like instrument. That was sheer magic! At the end he admitted that they are musicians and get excited with such gadgets. 😀

The evening ended with Maa Tujhe Salaam for the credits and Jai Ho, of course. What I missed was THE Swades song. That would have been mind-blowing and would have for sure reduced me to a bawling pool of tears.

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