All but inspirational

Sheriff has lost his voice. Ragasthan 2012 has announced another casualty. It’s probably the intense man management that’s speaking for itself. High time those morning speeches and drinking binges acted out.
At its best, his throat can now utter muffled noises.

Yet he speaks.
When not a terrible reminder of the shithole we’re in, it’s all but inspirational.

Exchanged identities

‘Come in Deputy S. This is Batman’.

‘What’?

‘Oh, shit! So sorry! Come in, Batman. This is Deputy S’.

Overworked and sleep deprived, the deputies now get confused with their own names. I can only imagine what lies ahead.

One for the Team

‘Stage, do you mind taking one more for the team’?

Smi is spitting fire. She wants someone to put up posters, banners and direction signs on the road to Kanoi. She insists that it has to happen today itself. I haven’t seen her so animated since that time in Ladakh when she lost all pictures from her camera. Well, someone else deleted them actually but that’s probably a story suited for later.

‘And don’t you worry. You’ll have Den and Volunteer SK to help you out. Take a few labourers along. You might need them’.

‘Is that all, Smi’? Just the posters’?

‘Well, yeah, pretty much. Den does have a few other things to take care of but you need not stress about that. In fact, in that time, you can probably sit at a café and get some writing done. What say’?

‘I’d love that, yeah. When do you want me to leave’?

‘Right now’!

So we begin.
We take Young Zuzu along. He is a good driver for his age. I really trust his sense of the local terrain.

Deputy SK follows us in a pickup truck. He is supposed to bring with him a few labourers and some 24 bamboo poles. Two for each poster, I am intimated. However, we soon realise that the truck isn’t following us at all. It’s nowhere to be seen. We try getting in touch with Deputy SK but his phone refuses to comply. No network, it seems.

Den and I decide to head to the city anyway. We might as well finish what we can, in the meantime.

He tells me that he has to send a courier each to Pushkar and Ahmedabad. It’s for the caravan guys. They need a few banners for their buses. He also has some work at a bank in town. Money transfer, I presume. A lot of that has been happening.

He drops me at the fort and leaves.
I head straight to La Puerta Del Sol, my favourite restaurant in the city. The idea is to sit back with countless cups of chai and write some shit. Like always, it works like magic. Now that I think of it, I have probably spent more time here than anywhere else in the last 45 days.

Den comes back in a few hours with absolutely nothing to show for his efforts. He looks like he is going to pull his hair out of his skull. That could mean one thing and one thing only, a shit day. Apparently, all banks and courier shops in and around the city are still shut in lieu of Diwali. Lost and irritated, he chokes with anger.

‘Please tell me Deputy SK is here with everything we need. I can’t stand wasting an entire day, man’.
I make a final call to his number. This time around, it rings.

‘Where are you, dude’?
‘In the city. Why’?
‘What do you mean, why? We’ve been waiting for you for over 3 hours now’.
‘Waiting for me?
‘Arrey! Ajeeb aadmi hai yaar. You were supposed to get us some stuff from the venue, remember’?
‘No. No, I don’t. What are you talking about’?
‘What? Are you serious, bro? No shit, you are serious. What a fucktard, I should have seen it coming’.

Denver is absolutely shattered. He looks at the posters and cusses hoarse, like gentleman King Kong. I think he is a little too familiar with this act of taking one for the team.

Buzzing with activity

The flies are here again. They haven’t yet missed a date. Every day, bright and early, they throng to our faces and wake us up. They are our alarm clocks.

I put my hat on and walk out the tent. Without the hat, braving the desert sun isn’t too great an idea. It feels pretty much like walking straight into an overexposed film. Any other day, I would have put my shades on. Not today, though. Not since Batman flicked mine last night. He is an exceptionally cheeky man, that one.

Sheriff is up and about as always. He is beaming with joy. The man wakes up at 5 in the morning, works all day like a motherfucking machine and never sleeps for more than 3 hours. Yet somehow, he always greets with a smile.

He tells me it’s Diwali today, even gives me a bear hug to prove it. Forget dates, I can’t even tell a rabbit from a car. Is it Diwali already? If it is, moreover, shouldn’t we be scared shitless? Aren’t we too close for comfort now? In just about three days, we are going to open our shores for an ocean of people to alight upon. They will obviously want to find everything they have been promised. Are we even prepared?

It turns out we are.

The venue is buzzing with activity. Walking in, I find a man draping a 30 feet canopy. He looks really happy to be up there. Further ahead, I see a man working under a canopy of tables. I can’t quite make out what he is doing but he seems intent on doing it. I presume it is important.

There is movement all around.

‘Haan! Now it looks like we’re going to have a festival here’.

Batman can see no wrong. It could well be my shades. They tend to make things look better than they actually are.

Brothers in tights

Robin is here.
Batman must be absolutely thrilled to have him.

All Ye Faithful

A couple of days back, Deputy S asked me, “You want a story for the blog?”

“Sure.”

“Musician has bought a new tractor!”

But that’s not the story. The story is that Master and Musician have been on-site every day since Day One. They have been there sun-up to sun-down and beyond. They have cleared land and transported supplies all over the site. When not on their tractors, they have gone about on foot doing every odd and even job possible.

They are no less than any member on this team. They are friends.

I ride in Musician’s tractor every evening. It’s ritual by now. And every morning, Master comes by to share his cigarette with me. He found me at noon today, hiding behind the tent for shade while I write. He offered a cigarette and said, “I was looking for you all day. I have been saving this.”

Musician has bought himself a new tractor because he knows we’ll need a more powerful machine at the site. He has bought it because he knows we’ll be here again next year. Because he knows he will again be part of this team. Because he has faith in us.

This festival would not be possible without bucket-loads of such faith.

It’s not just Master and Musician. Gajju Banna was only supposed to put up a colony of 200 Swiss Tents for us. He has been with us every day on every small detail. He has let us use his own camp site wily-nily. He has helped us supervise and pull through more than his domain.

Grand Meister and his brother, Padam Ji, have been with us every step of the way. We are strangers in this land, helpless without them. They are the two able feet this festival is standing on.

But why? It’s not the money. It cannot be. I personally don’t think there’s enough to go around for the hours and the sweat that has gone into this festival already. What they do it for is worth much more than money.

They do it because they share our dream. They believe that even if not probable given the time and resources, it is still possible. They believe that, together, we will make it happen. They have faith.

Faith makes stronger men of us all.

The only problem with it is that acting on faith has stolen Musician’s mojo, his eponymous identity. The new tractor plays no music.

Can we please buy him a transistor for it?

MIA

Deputy V and Deputy N have been missing in action. But they are finally here again. They had been in Jodhpur for five days sourcing equipment and materials for pretty much the whole festival. They would check out at nine in the morning every day, hoping to wrap up and leave for Jaisalmer. But every night, they would have to check back in.

“Arre, it was so embarrassing,” laughs Deputy V.

“Wahan toh dukan-wale bhi pehchaan-ne lage apne ko,” says Deputy N.

They are a welcome sight. They have been sorely missed. Especially when the sun bites and the shade looks like heaven and you need all eyes on the field.

“Woh log hote, na, toh yeh sab kaam aaraam se sambhal lete,” said Deputy S one day.

I doffed my hat at the fire in the sky and agreed. So did Deputy H. “Woh to akela hi poora ek team hai,” he said about Deputy V.

And now Deputy H himself is missing in action. At this time, it is exactly three days to the festival. And he has gone back to Delhi. We suspect it’s because he doesn’t want to miss the Diwali goodies at home.

We hope he gets back some at least.

Dark Night

It was a scary Saturday night at the campsite this week.

The team had scattered. Some had gone to get drinking water. We keep running out of it. Some had gone to get diesel for the generator. We keep running out of that too. Trucks needed to be directed over dirt roads into the venue. Some had gone to rescue one that had its wheels stuck in a pocket of sand.

The crew camp was plunged in darkness when Batman snuck in to the tent.

“I need to figure out five lakhs cash in ten minutes,” he said in a hoarse Batman whisper. Very unlike him. “I mean, I had to figure out five lakhs in one hour,” he said. “I’ve been trying for the last fifty minutes already. Think, think. How do we do this?”

Holy shit-my-pants, Batman! I don’t think I’ve ever seen five lakhs worth of currency.

So I did the best I could. I held my knees to keep them from knocking, zipped my lips to keep them from hyperventilating, and racked my brain to oblivion.

A couple of weeks earlier, something similar had happened. Batman walked out of the ATM with a grin and said, “There’s no money in the company account.” It was Navratri week. Banks opened and shut every alternate day. Deposits stayed uncleared. But advances paid to vendors had been immediately debited.

At that time, Batman said they would probably need to crowd-source investment for the festival. Sponsors are few and the scale is immense. The partners have been reaching into their own pockets already. Before leaving for Mumbai, Batman had asked Kaptaan, “So should we start looking for alternate sources of money? ...Moms and Dads, I mean.”

Batman laughed then. Not now.

Less than a week to the festival, Saturday night, 45 kms from an ATM, and a vendor is refusing to unload his goods if not paid five lakhs in cash immediately.

This time, Batman hit the panic button. It’s a rare sight. It’s terrifying. But what else can you do at gunpoint? What can you do when one hitch threatens to dismantle everything you’ve brought to the table? What can you do when there are trip wires at the finish line?

Later that night, Batman confessed, “This... this was my lowest point of the entire festival.”

We’re beyond that point now. Things still go wrong every day as they are bound to. And sometimes we’re definitely in the gutter. But, God, we’re looking at the stars again.

Chores on hold

‘No water? Again? I hate this shit, bro’.
Kaptaan is enraged.

Early morning isn't the time to run out of water.

Back Story

The last three days – or was it four? – have been a flurry of heat, sand and Brownian motion. There have been no words at my fingertips. Only stone, chalk, rope and bamboo. And bhuruts.

This was not the plan.

I’m Back.

I’m a writer.

When Batman invited me to stay in Jaisalmer for six weeks and create content for the Ragasthan Facebook page, I had my reservations. They needed only a few posts per day; that’s a couple of hours work at most. I didn’t want to be on holiday. Besides, I dread being a drag on resources.

I told him so. And he mailed me some images of the venue.

I kicked myself and booked the earliest train out. I met Stage at Bikaner (he drove down from Delhi) and we were off to Jaisalmer in the Rabbit.

The first two weeks were placid. Touristy. We put on our shades and roamed this little desert city. We met the people, read the lay of the land and its legends. We went looking for honey pancakes, lemon soda and stories in every serpentine gully. We wrote. We relaxed.

And then Unit One arrived.

That night, they blew the lid off the room. There was so much energy buzzing around that I was zapped long into the night. I told Stage maybe we should write a blog. Just to keep an account of how the team pulled off a desert Woodstock – or not. Either way, it would be a good story.

We would keep it honest. We would keep it unofficial. And we would keep it up every day.

I figured it would be easy. It’s not been.

How do you maintain perspective when you’re writing about an idea you’re in love with? How do you keep yourself in and out of the story at the same time? How do you detail all the little waves that push this boat along?

Besides, how do you write? Electricity is rare. The internet is fussy. And hours go by in the blink of an eye.

Still, this story must be told.

So I left for Jaisalmer this morning. Once there, I pottered around with a pen for an hour, all the while wondering if the barricade has been marked, if the registration counters are up, if the pathway to the BYOT has been fixed, if the backdrops for the stages have arrived, and so on.

There are only four days to the festival now. Every minute spent away from the venue is fraught with concern.

I hopped into the next vehicle back.

It is now night. Almost midnight. Half the team is still on-site. As I write sitting on my dorm bed in the crew tent, my mind wanders and goes out to them. My feet will soon follow.

For now, I’m part of the crew. I’m labour, I’m supervisor, I’m a small cog in a mountain moving machine. For now, as Kaptaan calls it, I’m the Pathfinder. I’m anything Ragasthan needs me to be.

Tomorrow, I’ll be Back again.

For a while.

Deputy Stage, is it?

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A carnival of superheroes

Batman calls for a crew meeting. He needs to know who’s taking care of what. Only then can he best decipher how to distribute responsibilities amongst them.
The guys get together and gather around under a food stall at Mauro. They wait for him to begin.

‘You were wondering what’s next on your plate, right? I’ll tell you what is. Go after Kingfisher. Your deal is to sort all the alcohol and all the water. Get it’?
Deputy M responds with a relieved smile. She has been begging for a piece of the action.

‘Shaktimaan ka kya hua? Have we ordered any’?

‘Shaktimaan’?

Deputy NS can’t quite understand why Batman needs an aging superhero at his disposal. Are we under a threat of some kind? Were those calendar freaks serious about the year 2012?

‘Arrey, those Shaktimaan trucks, dude! We were planning to rent some, remember? The idea was to paint them in striking colours, decorate them with frills and drapes and use them as a festival carrier. You guys don’t remember that’?

‘I do. But I didn’t think you were serious. Were you’?
Sheriff adds in a hushed tone.

‘I most definitely was. Look at it this way, okay. People are going to make trips to the city on a regular basis, crew and guests alike. Correct? Won’t it be absolutely badass then to have a festival truck that ferries them to and fro? All we need is some paint and some streamers. We’ll empty the entire section behind and place mattresses for seating. It’ll be fun, man. Plus it’s excellent branding, you know. There’s no way people won’t notice it’.

Sheriff and Deputy R make a note of all requirements.

Shaktimaan is called for.
This festival has turned into a superhero carnival.

Projected Repercussions

Out here, a good night of sleep comes with a lot of guilt. The thought itself is like blasphemy.

And the thing about blasphemy is that she’s my bitch for all eternity. Every now and then, she crawls back into my life like a forgotten debt. Take last night for instance, when she sneaked into our tents and lured me right to bed. She grabbed hold of me and didn’t let go till the sun came up. It must have been around midnight. I can’t really be sure. Such was her insistence. Such was the severity in her advances that I lost all track of time and went for tot submission.

No wonder I woke up ripe with repent. It was a shit move on my part, very unbecoming and totally uncool. Not implying that I didn’t have my reasons, no, that’s definitely not the case. I was immensely tired. But I sure could have braved the fatigue just a bit longer.

Take a leaf from the crew and their exploits, maybe.

They work out of their skins, throughout the day, in conditions that aren’t conducive to any kind of labour. They give it their all. Compared to them, I can really only disappoint. Those guys have raised the bar so fucking high that it seems inappropriate to even yawn. And I went so far ahead as sleeping.

Yet in hindsight, I know I must have been extremely worn down to have done what I did. I am not the kind that bails out on his team, you know. I am a hard worker and I like to play fair. You know what they say, though. Hindsight doesn’t count for shit. Repercussions do.

‘You missed quite a night, Stage. Check these out’.

At breakfast, Mod gave me a sneak peek into their travails of last night. The guys were up till 4, experimenting with different ideas for visual projections and imagery. They even locked a few concepts down.

Even Deputy R couldn’t stop talking about it.

‘Arrey, kya baat kar raha hai yaar! It was out of this world. Viktor was right on the button. It looked like a magic curtain. Batman was dancing around it. Mod and Deputy SK were clicking photographs. Kaptaan was swearing like he never has. Everyone was totally gushing’.

I missed it all. I was sleeping with my bitch.
It comes with a lot of guilt.

Whiskers and Bunny ears

'Do you think we can make an art installation out of Rabbit? Haan, stage? We'll give him whiskers and bunny years and put him on top of the dunes. He could bear our story, bro. Like a mascot. Pictures. Messages. Signatures. Excerpts from the blog. Heck, we'll have the whole blog on him. All the drama. All the chatter. I say it'd be banging. What say you'?  

Kaptaan is charmed. Not many can escape the big ball of cute that is my man, Rabbit.

'I'm serious, guys. What, you don't think we should do that? Okay, maybe not on top of the dunes. Somewhere else. But think about it, bro. A car that looks like a cute white rabbit standing at the art society. That shit will make people stop and stare'.

He seems adamant. I like the direction this conversation is headed to.

'Early October, was it? Haan? What date was it'?

'It was the 3rd. I was in Delhi. I woke up at 6 and drove Rabbit all the way down to Jaisalmer in 12 hours. Back was there too. He met me at Bikaner'.

'My point exactly'!

'What'?

'Rabbit has seen this thing get built from scratch, you know. He must have a lot of stories. Let's have them on him. Let the world read our story on our car'.

That kind of enthusiasm is hard to brush off. The floor is absolutely bought on the idea. 

Kaptaan scores. Rabbit wins.

The Ragasthan Palette

The festival colours are here. And how!

Earlier today, I saw Batman leaving the camp site with some weight on his head. The weight of pride. The weight of a glorious history. The weight of an illustrious clan of warriors and rulers.

He was sporting a turban - a stiff, bright Jaisalmeri Pheta.
All he needs now is a mean moustache. 

The Thirteenth Bengali

I’m not sure where this story begins.

Memories of the day are fragmented. The words in my head struggle to make phrases tonight.

It wasn’t the plan this morning. Not even at breakfast when Viktor was explaining that it’s possible, and maybe even interesting, to do something and document it at the same time.

Was it this evening, when the last production vendor backed out completely? No, that’s where the story ends.

It might have been a couple of days ago, when people here began to tell us that we need Bengali decorators. Jaisalmer cannot handle it. They have never seen anything on this scale. When an order is placed for 1100 tables, they say, “Take 800. Why 1100? 800 is enough. ...Take it!”

They have never experienced the intended quality either. When they put up stages, the benchmark is to be somewhat certain that it won’t fall down.

The festival is in a week. Except for Gajinder Singh who is putting up the Swiss Tents, everybody who got on board to build the festival has waited till the last minute to abscond. The team is now doing everything on their own. ‘Everything’ is not as small a word as it seems.

Neither is ‘team’.

But back to the Bengali decorators. We expect twelve of them tomorrow. We expect – we hope – they can deliver on the dream. I have my doubts. Bengalis are notorious rice-eaters. Rice makes you sleepy. And there is nothing lazier than a well fed Bengali.

I hope I’m wrong.

There is so much to be done. And they need doing.

So I put down the notebook and picked up a measuring tape. I was on-site with the deputies all day, marking every ten metres of both sides of every pathway on the festival site. The festival site is about a square kilometre big.

What a day.

On the field, there are three things I realised.

One is that making a straight line is not as easy as it seems. Not on undulating sand, and not when the line is 150 metres long. Especially when it’s not just one line that you’re making.

The other is that chalk is about as effective to mark spots in the desert as sand. One baby sandstorm wipes everything clean.

So we went back over the lines, this time with bamboos. We ran with them, racing the setting sun for daylight. We put bamboos down at every ten metres, everywhere we had already made the chalk markings. Tomorrow, when the decorators arrive, they just have to fit those bamboos in.

A few hours saved.

And then this news about the last production vendor backing out. A dark end to the evening.

Today was tiring. We got back at 8:30, Deputy S and I, the last remaining soldiers on the field. I melted into a chair the moment I sat down. My spine went limp, my jaw dropped and my eyes looked to the heavens for comfort.

The stars further disoriented me.

Which brings me to the third thing I realised on-site.

It was tiring but the deputies I rubbed shoulders with today have been doing this every day. Every day. In case someone forgets when everything is done and people have come and had a great time and gone home and the site has been cleared of every remnant of these memories – this is how the war was won.

Switching teams

Back wasn’t anywhere close to a shade. He wasn’t even writing.
I got it all wrong.

The man was in the field, helping Sheriff and the deputies mark pathways with chalk. He was really purposeful about it too. He was so engrossed in the job that he almost drank chalk from a bottle thinking it was water.

That was probably around noon. The sun must have been at its meanest.

Between then and now, the guys have stopped only for lunch. It’s almost seven now. They are marking certain spots on the pathway with bamboo poles four times my size. Back is still out there. He is really forcing the issue. The dude has eight bamboo poles on his aging shoulders. Everyone else has two at best.

I wonder if he has switched teams.

Extract. Come back.

‘Chalein Ammara’?
A part of the crew heads out with Kaptaan. They have their hats, caps and shades on. A pickup truck takes them to the farthest point of the festival, the electronic music stage. Back tells me it needs immediate attention. What doesn't?

Mod, Viktor and Rock stay back at the camp.

Here as a team that thrives within itself, they talk about their plans for today. They are here to create visuals for us, the kind of stuff that sounds too cool and improbable to execute. But then, that’s just me. I lack imagination. These guys definitely don’t. One look at their notebook screens and I'm astonished already.

Batman too is at the camp. I can hear him talking on his phone. That’s how he gets most of his work done. That’s how he keeps this festival from falling apart. I can’t quite get how that makes any sense, but I am told he cannot afford being off it even for an instant.

Sometimes, I wonder if he is actually just talking to the phone and psyching himself out.

Back is nowhere to be seen. He must be working in a quiet spot with some shade. That’s how he gets his creative juices flowing. That’s his mojo. That’s how he comes up with gold. If not for him, I don’t think this blog would have any readers.

‘Makes a lot of sense, I think. He is looking at the centre from outside the centre. He is making an objective view. Fuck yeah, that makes sense. He is a smart guy’.

Viktor gets it too. He endorses it in fact.

I clearly don’t. I have my headphones. They are loud and clear and fucking intense. I use them to extract from the centre. Are they any help? Well, my posts read like a load of crap and my ear hurts like a sting.

I must soon find a quiet spot with some shade.

Kansas, Mumbai, Jaisalmer

The Mumbai team needs to send us a courier, but they don’t know where exactly to send it. “I know that,” Batman says into his phone. “I thought the idea was to do it in a place without a postal address!”

Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

The wind blows to a different tune in the desert. Life is gradual. These sands trickle through the hourglass at a much slower pace. The day begins at sunrise and ends, surprisingly, at sunset. As it well should. Not like in the metropolis.

This is proving to be a problem.

With a week to go and an almost empty plot to set up all the way into the dunes, construction needs to be on 24/7. And it needs to be done by people who live and die by deadlines. It needs to be done by people who feel every tick of the clock like a blade on their neck.

This festival now needs a Mumbai.

Everything is going according to plan. Except the plan itself.

Perhaps it’s for the best. The team has recently worked out that it is cheaper to get skilled labour from Mumbai than from Jaisalmer. It is cheaper to pay for their travel, food, stay and services for the entire duration than to pay the charges quoted by local professionals.

Grand Meister had warned us that skilled labour is in short supply in this little desert city. They are in even shorter supply a week before Diwali.

The same goes for materials. Now that the vendors for the festival setup have backed out, the team needs to source all the required materials themselves. And they need to do it right now.

Where in Jaisalmer would you find thirteen kilometres of cloth? Where would you find three thousand empty plastic bottles? How about ten thousand bamboos?

Nobody here can imagine orders of such quantities. And when you do find the materials, the cost of rental turns out to be astronomical.

So the team has decided to do something so daft that it just might be brilliant. If something costs too much to rent, they’re going to buy it. This puts a major dent in the budget. When you rent, you can pay part advance and the rest after the event. When you buy, you have to put all your money down at once. Cash-flow tightens like a noose.

The festival is already running into losses. But it will happen. They’ll take the hit. They’ll make the assets, if they must.

Fridges? Buy them. Metal trunks? Buy them. More bamboo than you’d find in a forest? Fuck it. Buy them.

“By the time this is over,” laughs Batman, “we’ll be the biggest decorators in Rajasthan.”

Matters at hand

Breakfast is served. The guys get their helpings and assemble in the shade behind our tent. Their plates bear the burden of their dreams. Their eyes ache for sleep but they know that there are more pressing matters at hand.

Batman begins. He wants the team’s unwavering attention.

Grand Meister interrupts. He too wishes to address us all.

‘I have been thinking’…

He has set his eyes on getting healthier.
January onwards, he wants to concentrate more on his personal wellness. No film sets, no camel tours, no business trips. None of that shit. Henceforth, he resolves to make Ragasthan the only assignment he takes upon. We are pleasantly surprised. We stand strong in favour of the motion.

He loves our passion project too much to let go, anyway. He has taken it upon himself to assure us a smooth sailing debut. From sorting permissions and getting local help to booking stalls and working in the field, he partakes however he can. His wisdom and forthrightness has helped us walk around most obstacles.

The guys would obviously love to have him around, year after year. His presence itself is such an assurance.

‘You guys are nuts. He needs to chill out and take it easy. As much as I love and respect Grand Meister, I don’t think he deserves to slog like the rest of us. He should resolve to stop. He doesn’t know what he is setting himself up for. Events like these are nightmares to work around. He will soon wish he hadn’t said that’.

The bubble bursts.
We are back to matters at hand.

Facelift

Sheriff takes an early morning bath. It’s been five days since he stepped into a shower.

He walks out looking like nobody I have ever known.

Out There

4 days earlier, Batman told me, “Don’t put this on the blog. Yet. The Bombay office will freak. Give me four days to sort this out. Then you can put it up as: ‘4 days ago, this happened...’”

So.

4 days ago, this happened.

The person in charge of the entire physical setup of the festival came to the site with his team. And backed out immediately. Verdict: “This is impossible.”

Impossible. That's what they also said about clearing this plot.

Two weeks to the festival, and there’s nobody to set it up. They have already wasted two days waiting for this team to show up and commence construction. Frantic calls are made to other vendors.

The next day, they manage to make contact with a vendor they had met earlier but not gone ahead with. He’s going to raise the prices. That’s expected. And he sounds confident. That’s great.

The day after, he arrives with his team. He says he can’t manage a couple of things within this timeframe. But he can do everything else. That’s okay. The Ragasthan team will take care of the rest.

The next day, he says he can’t do a couple of other things. So the team says, that’s okay, we’ll do it. We have to. Then he can’t do another thing. And another. By nightfall, he’s begging to crawl out of the whole deal.

And we come to now. Five hours after the last phone call with the vendor.

It's 5 am. I am checking the temperature online. It says 17 degrees Celsius for Jaisalmer. Deputy R was walking by with his hands stuffed in his pocket and his collar turned up like an early 90s' Bollywood actor. He doesn’t agree with the internet. I agree with him. The cold doesn't agree with either of us.

I’m typing this with shivering fingers. The breeze blowing free across these flatlands feels like dead lizards slithering up and down your spine.

Half the team is huddled around a tiny fire near the Morio stage. The base of the stage has been put up in the last three hours. The other half of the team is setting up the Olun stage. Master and Musician are with them along with some local labourers. I am plugged in to the generator nearby.

Earlier, Deputy D was showing Batman a list of all the things the vendor cannot deliver. Kaptaan gets impatient. He’d rather see the list of the things he can help us out with. That’s a very short list.

Deputy S tells me that they are now constructing 70% of the festival by themselves. After having lost a precious week to professionals who couldn’t handle the scale.

How will they do it?

Well. It's going to be morning soon. And they’re still out there.

Only natural

The time is 3 am.
We gather around a bonfire with our hands stretched out. We sit close to each other. There is a sharp breeze running across our noses. Winter has announced its arrival.

Kaptaan demands chai for warmth and energy. Batman prepares some. He serves it to everyone present - crew members, drivers, labourers and our very own superheroes, Master and Musician. Everyone sits around the same fire and chats about their daily exploits.

The guys have been working from 6 in the morning. That’s almost a day spent entirely in the field. By the time they hit their beds today, they would have laid a foundation for one of the four music stages to be built upon. At this rate, they need not worry.

‘As long as there is some chai being served, work wouldn't stop. It shouldn't’.
Kaptaan declares.

They finish their cups and head back to business. Surprisingly, they look good for another 14 hours. If at all, sleep is definitely the last thing on their minds.
With just about 10 days to go for the festival, that’s only natural.

Get Up, Go, Get Lost?

The festival site is tucked away into the interiors behind Kanoi village. There are no roads here. Only dirt trails that go every which way at once. Stage and I take a wrong turn or three every time we leave or return to this place.

I’m used to getting lost on these roads.

But today was different.

We went looking for Gajju Banna at the Swiss Tent campsite, Sheriff and I. We went on foot, starting a couple hundred feet from the Morio stage. There’s only one generator at the site and it is being taken to the Morio stage. We need another. Gajju Banna has a spare.

It’s dark, so we went by torchlight. And we got lost. Within the festival grounds.

I swear there used to be a road here!

We circled half the perimeter and would probably have walked on through the night if we hadn’t seen lights at the campsite from afar. So we headed there in a bee-line, across fields of bhuruts and thorns.

By the time we got there, Gajju Banna had already left for his own campsite. So we headed for the crew tents. It’s only a five minute walk away.

The moon rises late these days and you can see the Milky Way stretching across the sky like faraway strands of sparkling cotton. It’s a beautiful night, quiet, cold and calm. All around, strange shapes loom and melt into the darkness. We stumble on to the dirt trail and keep walking.

It’s a good walk.

Sheriff and I joke about how it would be a terrible idea for guests to sneak out of the festival premises on their own for a clandestine rendezvous in the dark. How would they find their way back?

After what seems like fifteen minutes or so, we step aside as we see headlights approaching. The car pulls up next to us, a window rolls down, and Vinay, our driver from Mumbai, peeks out. “Where are you going?”

“To the crew tents. Where are you going?”

“To the crew tents.”

“So why are you going that way?”

“And why are you going into the village?”

Lost again. Another fifteen minutes and we would have walked all the way out on to the main road.

A misplaced wish

Deputy NS has an atrocious wish up her sleeve. She wants a case of Tuborg for herself.
Someone needs to remind her that we are in the desert.

She'll be lucky to find even a bottle of drinking water.

The Plot

“The entire site is plotted and ready,” says Deputy D.

I had imagined that would be great news. Inspiring. Liberating, even, after so many days of hard toil. I was wrong. This news means that Phase II can begin. But Phase II is not completely ready.

Confucius say, never mark sand with chalk unless you want your plans to fly away 

Local vendors have inflated costs at the last minute. The festival is held hostage at so many gun-points that there’s hardly any space to squirm. Twenty five brains are working on how to cut costs without cutting down on the dream.

Withdrawals on the account are instant. But deposited cheques are bouncing.

Promised materials are running scarce locally. Transporting from other states is too expensive.

The team is still on its feet and running. But that’s probably because they are all slightly mad. There’s a method to the madness. A week back, Kaptaan was telling the team to keep joking around. Keep pulling each other’s leg. Keep each other on their feet. It’s the only way to stay motivated through all this.

Stage emerged from a shower just now looking all chirpy. The loos got installed only this morning. I haven’t had a bath in three days. I tell Stage that I’m getting used to it. I could have my next bath on the 15th.

“Yeah,” he says. “But that will only happen when the madness begins.”
“When it begins?”

Sometimes I wonder what world he lives in. Stage believes it’s all smooth and it’s all happening. One day he got a shot of the team dropping exhausted to their feet on the dunes and has since convinced himself that, oh, they were all just chilling.

Chilling? In the desert?

I fear for him. Poor boy. He’s not even brilliant enough to be famous as a lunatic. Maybe the heat got to him. Maybe the stress. Maybe the diarrhea.

Whatever the reason, he has totally lost the plot.

And then I look around at this highly motivated hive of a team and wonder… maybe it’s me.

More than usual

We team up in smaller groups.
We achieve more than the usual.

Grand Meister makes a trip to the city with Young Zuzu. Most of his work involves doing that. He comes back later in the evening, with news so exciting it makes our heart skip a beat.
Thanks to him, we now have the necessary permissions to fly hot air balloons at the festival. Only as high as 400 metres, though. Anything beyond that might be a security hazard.

Deputy V and Deputy N make a trip to Jodhpur. They stay back for the night. They are expected to purchase and place orders for a whole lot of things. Like deep freezers, luggage trunks, jute baskets and power generators.

The staff toilets are finally here, a day too late perhaps but that doesn't change the fact that they are here now. Big Tony has earned back his brownie points. He looks a relieved man.
His men ground the framework first and then move to installing utilities. They work the whole night to make sure no more bushes are crapped on.

Gajju Bana and his men sweat blood and fire in the ravaging sun. They work diligently and as a unit. His swiss tents will be up and ready in no time. Batman is sure of it. I just hope they look as breathtaking as I think they do.

Two men from Jaipur visit the site at lunch. They represent the design team that has been hired to take care of most installations. A quick tour and they are on board. They look confident. It is reassuring to finally have a team that gets our vibe.

Batman and Kaptaan sit down with Sheriff and the deputies. There’s still some leveling and plotting to take care of.

Mails are exchanged. Phone calls are made. Every minute, there’s a new problem. Solutions are thought of and implemented then and there.

The night settles into a slumber. It has been a productive day.
Smaller groups achieved much more than the usual.

Out in the open

Luxury tents and attached bathrooms for visitors.

For the crew, however, it’s either that

or the damn bushes. Pick your spot!

Night Falls

The loos haven't arrived. Neither have more beds. And the crew is increasing.

"It's the largest district in the world, dude. But you can't find shit here," says Kaptaan. "Except bhuruts."

Tough day today.

Some local vendors have backed out wily-nily. They cannot handle the scale.

But the caterers are here.

And the moon is like a wedge of lime.

In one corner, the deputies crowd around a laptop and a torch. In another, Batman, Kaptaan and Grand Meister are discussing what lights to illuminate the pathways with. Among a million other things.

Consider insects that flock to the light here, consider aesthetics, consider cost of electricity, consider cost and efficacy of setting it up. And consider availability, more than anything else.

Switch off. Save the moths.

The night stretches on.

Why I Got Up And Went

It’s been more than a month since I’ve been in Jaisalmer. And more than a week by the venue. I have lost all sense of time. I notice the date only when the blog updates. Then I forget it.

I can smell my clothes for miles. My feet have taken on several shades of brown and grey. And my hair is probably being mined by the sand mafia.

“God, I haven’t seen a mirror in so long,” says Batman. It’s been only two days since he got back from Mumbai. If I saw a mirror now, I’d probably try to shake hands with it.

Life in production-land is a little disorienting.

It’s also like walking through a dream. Especially when your GPS shows this:

Is Felix Baumgartner looking for another landing site?

No happenstance

Every time I mock Back on the blog, I get an upset stomach in reward.
That is just too much of a coincidence.

Frying Pan or Fire?

We have made the move. Out of the campsite and into the wilderness.

Wilderness in the desert = ONE tree

Although, to be specific, we’re nowhere at the moment. We were at the venue for breakfast. Then I had to head back to the campsite because all the laptops at the venue were dead. By lunch, there was a power outage at the campsite. Back to the venue.

Now we’re back at the campsite again to charge our laptops. We’ve given up our tents, though. Our bags are in the Rabbit. We’re at least seventeen of us. There are twelve mattresses. We’ll be dining at the venue. And we’ll be sleeping in the open. That’s as far as I know.

Oh, and loos will be installed at the venue only by tomorrow afternoon.

Fun!

Level III

It is a staircase.

It is a slow and gradual climb. We are nearing level III.

Our ascent began the day the crew arrived. We were in a hotel in Jaisalmer, five minutes from the fort. It was a time of utter chaos. Even the festival venue changed. Nonetheless, the boys did get a lot of paperwork and permissions sorted. That was Level I. Ground floor.

We then climbed higher and moved closer to the venue. At a camp site south of Kanoi. Things got going. Master, Musician, Bumblebee and Bladerunner went on a famous killing spree. Batman too joined the party. The venue was tailored clean for the design team to later add elements. That was Level II.

We now depart for the toughest climb. On site. To our new home, the desert. The business end of the festival awaits with an evil grin on its face. In a few days, there will be another 90 of us working their asses off to get this bitch ready. God only knows what will become of it.

It is a staircase. This is Level III. I call it Pandemonium.

Shifting Stages

“Every time both of them start walking, I get scared,” says Grand Meister. “They’ll come back and say they now want that dune – all the way over there.”

“Sure, sure,” says Deputy H. “Then that dune. And then those trees. We’ll put up a stage on the Pakistan border also.”

Grand Meister laughs. “And we’ll put giant alphabets spelling Ragasthan on those windmills.”

We have been scurrying over the dunes like beetles in heat. It’s been a couple of hours already and the sun is taking a dive. We sit down for a break as well.

Batman and Kaptaan were right here. We were discussing how this dune could be used. Batman asked what this slope could be called. Then they were down the slope and suddenly they were a couple hundred feet away. Five more minutes and they were specks on the horizon.

"Look," says Sheriff. "Vasco da Gama and Columbus."

Vasco da Gama and Columbus have gone looking for Ujalo, the film tent.

What part of 'Get Up And Go' did you not understand?

We’ve been through this quest before. Yesterday, Kaptaan led us into the dunes at around the same time. “Let’s go find Ammara,” he had said. And we had followed like thirsty travellers looking for an oasis.

But locations have still not been marked on the dunes. There’s too much to take into account.

You need enough space between stages so that sound doesn’t travel between them. But even small distances grow larger on the undulating dunes. There’s going to be a lot of walking required.

Toilets need to be placed close enough to the bars and stages on the dunes. But toilets can only be built on solid ground. There’s some solid ground in patches within the dunes. But how do you get water to them?

More maps are scribbled on sand. The Morio stage is now trading places with Olun. Again. Ammara is locked. Batman and Kaptaan return to tell us that Udham and Ujalo have been found.

“And we’re thinking of putting giant alphabets on the windmills,” says Deputy H.

“Hmm,” says Batman and turns eager eyes to the horizon.

“What? No, no,” he sputters. “We’re just joking!”

Madcap Chatter

We have had a day of startling conversations. Here's a few.

1745 hours

On site

Deputy N and Deputy R

What are you doing, dude? You look retarded.

What? It's impossible for me to not play with sand when I am having a sit down. I can't help it, ok.

You can totally help it, OK. Stop having a sit down. That's how.

0110 hours
Tent 04

Back and Batman

Do you even realise how far you've spread out now? People are going to get lost in this vastness.

Well, maybe.

Doesn't that concern you at all? 

It does. But you know what? The kind of vibe that we have, Back, I don't think anybody would mind getting lost. It can be fun too, you know.

0415 hours

Tent 04

Batman and Back

What time is it?

Time for you to go to sleep, dude. Tomorrow will be a long day.

We've got 12 days to do what we need at least 45 for. Trust me, I need every day to be long.

1040 hours

Staff Camp

Sheriff and Deputy V

Which way is Olun facing? Towards the rising sun?

I don't know. I'll have to check.

Which way is Morio facing?

I don't know. I'll have to check.

What? Haven't you been marking everything?

Just the pathways. I am awaiting instructions for the rest. Don't even get me started on how confused I am.

1215 hours

On site

Kaptaan and Deputy V

The pathway has gone wakda, bro. Look at it.

It's the desert. Everything is wakda, no?

Arrey! How are people going to walk like that?

Wakda!

This was fun. I can't wait to do more. 

Meanwhile, Batman and Kaptaan take another walk.

They need to plot each section to absolute perfection, all within the next seven days. Thereafter, the design teams would take over.

Seven days. That's all.

Let's make the best of it.

Last Supper

“This morning, we left at six,” says Deputy S. First it was only him and Deputy V. As they were leaving, Deputy N woke up.

‘Kahaan jaa raha hai?’
‘Site.’
‘Abhi?’

The first tractors arrive at 6:30. Kaptaan needs two deputies to direct them.

‘Wait, I’ll wash my face and join you.’
And then Deputy R was up. ‘I’m coming too.’

The team has been on a mission.

Mission: Demolition

Kaptaan took us on a hike to the centre of the site today. He pointed to faraway landmarks. “See that tree? Those two trees out there? That’s where the Swiss Tents will be.” Hidden away in a colony all their own. Some areas will be tucked away within the dunes. Activities in the centre. Restaurants a couple of hundred metres from there. Hot-air balloon way out there on the other side. So on.

Kaptaan described it all like it will be. All I saw were chalk boxes in lonely clusters on a vast flatland stretching to the dunes.

The plot is now so clean that you have an unobstructed view from one corner to the other. But it is so enormous that you would barely make out what’s out there.

The sheer scale of this setup terrifies me.

Invisible tents. Book now!

At night, Deputy V is wiping his plate clean with rotis, chicken, rice, dal, bread, omelette and churma. “Aaj toh kapde-phaad kaam kiya.”

It’s just the deputies with us at dinner. Kaptaan and Sheriff are spending the night at the site. The first crew tents have come up today. We might be moving there tomorrow.

If so, this is our last supper here.

“Aaj kapde-phaad, aur kal tha palank-tod,” says Deputy N. True story. The bed in their tent broke down the middle last night. There’s no clear answer why.

Perhaps it’s just as well that we’re moving out.