The Ba(n)d Episode

“Okay, where is this new house of yours??” asked Ritesh on the cell phone.
I was enjoying a lazy afternoon at the new place, all alone, watching a How I Met Your Mother marathon on TV. when Ritesh had called.
“Whatdya mean? You wanna come over?” I asked, by way of a reply.
“Well I think I’m in the neighbourhood, and I have something important to tell you.”
Now, the thing about Ritesh, he never had anything unimportant to say. Nothing as trivial as the weather or the game last night finds its space in Ritesh’s brain.
“Sure, just tell me where you are, and I’ll give you the route.” I replied, my brain already buzzing at what Ritesh could probably have to say on a weekday afternoon.
“Well, I’m standing at a 3-way near the bypass…which road do I take?”
“The one on the right and keep walking straight till you hit the compound.”
Another thing about Ritesh, he has absolutely no sense of direction. With hardly any work, Ritesh could get lost inside a telephone booth. So I wasn’t surprised when he took nearly half an hour to reach my home where most people take just under ten minutes. Bent at the waist, hands on the knees, gasping like he’d run a race, Ritesh was the very picture of the average teenager in much need of exercise.
“Well, I told you to keep walking straight…but evidently, you had trouble following even that route.”
“I thought I’d found a shorter route, but it had a treacherous curve to it. Of course, I realized that too late. But, let us not talk drivel, for I have something to tell you that will blow your brain…at the very minimum.” he said. He was still pretty pink after his exertions but now there was a hint of a smile.
“Well, make yourself comfy while I get you something cold. God, Ritesh, next time I tell you to go straight, you go straight!” I said from the kitchen, fixing him a cold one.
A minute later, glass of lemonade in his hand, Ritesh drew himself up very soberly and asked, “You ready for what I have to say?”
My interest was fairly high and I said yes.
I still regret it.
“Okay, as I pour forth, do NOT interrupt! I intend to start a band and so far I have everything where I want except one major thing. I needed a drummer and I asked myself who, among all the people I know, would be good enough a drummer for my band? And I come up with your name, naturally. Now, this band idea is not without a firmer purpose than just roaming the countryside looking for performances. I know a person at this upcoming café on Park Street who’d give us a good deal for weekend performances.
There is money in this business and I intend to make a fortune out of it. So, what say? You’re in?”
Ritesh is also given to a fair share of crazy ideas. Usually, it takes our entire company together to make him see reason but this time he was not to be made see reason the easy way. Shrewdly, he had visited the intended people at their homes where the opposition against his ideas would be minimal. But I would not go without a fight.
“No way I’m in a band! It’s ridiculous! I don’t even know who else there is…and…and it’s been a long time since I’ve played drums.” I countered.
“Aw pshaw! There’s Rahul on bass and I’ll be lead vocals and guitar. Small band, but I figure we’ll be pretty good at it. And I have every faith in your drums skills. C’mon! It’ll even pay! Not much in the beginning, but as we put in more performances, I daresay the money’ll look good.”
“All that’s very good, but there’s no way I’m going to play in public…its not like I need the money, you know.”
“Fine then…but don’t forget that band-guys score major with girls, and if I remember right, that is something you do need.”
Ritesh had done his homework. There was a girl, Debadrita, I was trying to go out with. But first impressions, regrettably, were not that good and I was desperately trying to make things right again. Somehow Ritesh had caught hold of this bit of information and was now milking it for all it was worth. And I must say, at that time, that cheap trick worked on me. I saw him looking at me with a smile on his face. He had seen his victory on my face.
“Fine…I’ll do it, but just for Debadrita and I don’t need the money”, I said, looking the other way.
“Oh look at you, Quixote… hopeless in the clutches of dumb love…okay, practice starts from Wednesday. We have this entire week and the weekend after that, we perform!”
And with that, he was off.

Wednesday practice was a lot better for Rahul than for the two of us. He seemed to be the only one who had somehow managed to practice the guitar. My drum was anything but good percussion and Ritesh’s singing wasn’t making it any better while his guitar was making it worse.
“Oh baby I can’t hear you!!
You’ll have to sing harder!
Baby I can’t hear youuuuu!!”
This is just the first verse of the lyrical horror that Ritesh said would floor the crowd at our gig.
To make this agonizing part really short, the description above was more or less the same for the rest of the days’ practice. But I was without my, if modest (oh who am I kidding? It’s minuscule) good common sense and I did not abandon my titanic. When you’re in love, you get priorities upside down and making a fool of yourself will seem to be perfectly normal. On the night before our performance I texted Debadrita telling her about the gig and told her it’d be great if she came.
The day came without much in the way of being heralded as anything special. The sun rose, and my desire for a morning run died a clockwork death, as on every other morning, in bed. Rest of the day was pretty much the same too except for the feeling you have in your guts when you know that you are going to do something very big (and unbelievably dumb) in a short while. At around four in the afternoon I set out for the café where we were supposed to perform. Ritesh had called earlier that day saying that everything would be set up for us. The metro ride to Park Street was customarily stuffy and uncomfortable. Coming out of the subway, the ten minute walk to the café was the first moment that I realized that Debadrita had never replied to my sms. But I put that down to her aversion to making much conversation. Maybe she’d come. Reaching the café, I found it to be one of the new retail chains opening all over the country. Their tag line was “A lot can happen over coffee and cake”. Well, a lot was going to happen that day. I saw that both Ritesh and Rahul had reached the place before me. Rahul was looking composed but Ritesh was downright smiling! I remember feeling so queasy at reaching the café (sometimes that happens when you see the venue where you know you will be making an ass of yourself, in love or not) that his smile was even a bit comforting. At least he thought it wouldn’t go wrong. We were making nervous small talk when Ritesh’s contact at the café came out and guided us in through a backdoor. Leading us into, what had earlier been a storage room of some sort, he told us that we had five minutes and then we’d be onstage.
“Okay! This is what we’ve been practicing for the last two weeks and I say we do it!” pepped up Ritesh.
Did we have a choice? I think I did. I could have run.
“Sure man….better get a move on.” replied Rahul picking up his guitar case.
After getting lost a couple of times (Ritesh was leading) we managed to reach the small stage. Getting Rahul’s and Ritesh’s guitars set up took a few minutes and then we were ready. Some café guy came up and took the microphone to introduce us. I didn’t hear much of it. The sound of blood pounding through my ears was loud enough to drown every other noise at that moment. I tried to look into the crowd of the café patrons. It was dimly lighted and not the sensibly way either. But from what I could make out, Debadrita hadn’t arrived (yet?). Then I heard Ritesh start talking and after a while the cue for us to start playing.
“Oh baby I can’t hear you!!
You’ll have to sing harder!
Baby I can’t hear youuuuu!!”
The adrenaline rush I was feeling right then was just about letting me play the drums properly. Which is why I couldn’t see that the crowd wasn’t reacting the way Ritesh had calculated. In retrospect, I think Rahul was the first one who sensed it, which made sense because Ritesh always sings with his eyes closed and face screwed into an image of utmost concentration. Rahul missed a chord first. And then he missed it again. Ritesh, missing his cue, faltered. That’s when the first missile hit him. It was only a bit of cake topping, but it was enough to stop us completely. And then the missiles rained. I got up from behind the drums when I saw Rahul running for cover. It was just another bad decision in the end. My feet got caught up in the cables and I stumbled right in front Ritesh. Something hit me on the head and that’s the last I remember seeing anything of the café.
When I woke up, I was lying on a couch in….Ritesh's place. There was a dull ache in the side of my skull. Touching it, I saw someone had bandaged over a very big swelling. On top of all that, nothing was making any sense.
“So, come around finally, have you?” I heard Ritesh from behind me.
“Damn….what happ—why am I here?!”
“Wow…you know, of all the people I know who’ve had their heads bashed in, you’re the first who asked that question. Okay, now the more important question would be- ‘what went wrong in there?’”
For a few groggy moments I didn’t even realize that he was talking about the gig at the café. Then realization came screaming like a freight train on a cold winter morning.
“Look Ritesh…no offence, but this band thing was on a really short notice…and I just don’t think we were good enough to go out there. And what did they throw at me?! An anvil?!”
“Ah….it was a salt shaker, or a pepper one. One can never be sure about these particulars at such times when one is dodging plates. So you think that with time and practice, our band can excel our present form and then we can go public?”
And then I told him why it would be better for all of us if the band thing didn’t go any forward. With time, the only things that could improve would be the crowd’s aim and choice of projectiles. It wasn’t easy convincing Ritesh to give up the idea, but he saw the reason in my bump on the head.
“Oh well…I suppose we went as far as we could. No money, though. Oh, and did it work out with Debadrita?”
No, it hadn’t. At least I don’t remember seeing her in the crowd.
“Naah… oh well, it was a long shot anyway. Maybe she didn’t get my message…”
“Oh will you forget her now?! She clearly doesn’t have anything for you! You can lie to yourself that she does, but that wouldn’t get you anywhere now, would it? Look, being single right now…it’s the best thing. There’s plenty of others too and with Christmas around the corner we can score with them!”
It was going to be hard to forget her, but Ritesh, Ritesh that he was, hit it on the mark.
“I suppose so…oh well, I gave it my best. Say, what happened to Rahul??”
“Oh, he made it back safe and sound. I just had trouble lugging your carcass through the backdoor. Boy, you are surprisingly heavy. You should start running in the morning, you know.”
On the way back home I lapsed back into my thoughts…thinking about the band…thinking about the gig…about her. I couldn’t kid myself about her anymore. There was nothing and I just had to accept it. At least I had realized that, even if it meant joining a band that had just one performance and even that one cut short by an angry mob and a nasty welt on the head. I felt my phone vibrate.
The display said “YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE”.
It was from Debadrita. Reading it, I felt everything I had been thinking about go right out the window.
The message read “You’re kiddin, ryt?”