Five times sweeter

‘Five stalls? So sweet, yaar’!

Sheriff is thrilled. A garment workshop from the city has just offered to put five stalls up at the festival. He thinks it’s a smooth deal. 

Kaptaan doesn’t quite see the picture.

‘Arrey, what sweet? He wants to make money, as much as he can. He’ll obviously want enough space. What’s so sweet about that’?

‘I don’t know. What did you tell him’?

He looks a little glum does Sheriff. It is very typical of him to speak fondly of strangers, even people he hasn’t yet met.

‘I told him he can have three at most. We have 17 in total, right? All of them can’t have garments’.

‘Poor guy, man’.

Sheriff is distraught. He wishes well for the whole world. Kaptaan thinks of offering another explanation but gives up in between.

There's no point talking business with an angel.

Stagezilla v/s The Desert Beetles

In the movie, this beetle will be played by Paul McCartney

We’re walking to the site at a leisurely pace yesterday – it’s nearing sunset and the weather is learning to chill – when we hear a soft but distinct crunch.

“You killed it!”

Stage has stepped on a dung-beetle. There are thousands of them around. Probably millions. This is when they scurry out of their holes to forage for food before they go to sleep for the winter. They are curious, quite unafraid and totally harmless.

One of them now lies belly-up on the ground. It’s still twitching.

Stage is frozen with one foot off the ground.

“You didn’t even kill it,” says Kaptaan. “At least put it out of its misery.”

Stage shrugs. There’s another crunch.

“It’s still not dead!”

Crunch.

Stagezilla the Beetle-killah has unleashed terror on the benign denizens of these dunes. Batman is worried it’s going to get much worse by the time we’re done with the festival.

The land needs to be prepared for setup – raked and flattened. Dung beetles, salamanders, they all like to pitch their camps beneath the shade of wild bushes. If too many bushes get uprooted, so many desert inhabitants would be left without a home. Where will they go?

Not into the Ragasthan campsite, I hope.

Meanwhile, Stagezilla’s reign of terror continues.
I didn’t see a single dung beetle at the site today.

Lunatics on crack

The debate continues.

They walk to the other side, again. Batman hasn’t made up his mind yet. He isn’t entirely convinced with the current scheme of things.

‘We are playing around with too much flat land, dude. That’s not gonna work. We haven’t promised people a plateau. We’ve promised them a bed of dunes.’

He does have a point. There’s no doubt about that. Yet I am not too sure if they can afford to make changes as they go. Time is paramount here. And there’s not much left to play around with.

The indecision is gradually getting to my head.

Meanwhile, it goes on. Batman looks around like a hungry scavenger, running his eyes everywhere, trying to find the most composite design structure for the festival. He looks haggard already. This thing is going to take a lot out of him.

‘We need to integrate everything – dunes, shrubs, flat lands – everything as one collective unit. It should look compact and enormous at the same time.’

I wonder if he is thinking a little too much, trying too hard to please too many people.

It’s not just him, I soon find out. Kaptaan joins in the debate right after. He has been awfully quiet today.

‘Look. The festival village has to be close enough for it to not become a bothersome walk. You know what I’m saying, right? You can’t ask people to walk a mile just to get to a restaurant. Then again, you can’t have the village very close either. People are going to sleep in those damn tents. You’ve got to give them that quiet – that kind of peace’.

It’s going nowhere. They have now gathered everyone around on a little water tank. I fear for this to turn into a giant conference of gibberish.

They take their charts and pencils out. Batman and Kaptaan draw strange lines and patterns even as the rest of us – Sheriff, the deputies, Back and I look on in amusement. They mark key elements next. Frankly, it looks too easy to be true.

‘This is great. I think it comes together just fine. What do you think’?

I indulge in a chuckle. They can’t be serious.

I give the chart a passing glance. Somehow, it looks cohesive and neat. I still can’t quite believe it, though. Almost 20 hours of wandering around like a lunatic on crack, yet barely minutes to design it all? That just can’t be true.

Yes, it is. It’s unbelievably seamless. These nutjobs have cracked a miracle just walking around. No wonder they have fancier names than us.

The debate ends.

Best Laid Plans

The new venue is the old venue. The old venue was the new venue but for a while.

Ah, Batman, you speak in riddles.

As it happens, Batman knows these dunes. He gave us the directions when we drove him there two days ago. This is the location he had always wanted for the festival. This is where he got the idea for it some five years back. A twist of fate had taken it off the table. A twist of fate has brought it back.

And Fate is twisted indeed. It has sown thorns into the previous location. Spread them over more than half the flatland within the intended festival site.

These thorns are sharp, prickly burs the size of your finger tips. They latch on to you in snowy clusters and, God, they hurt. The Rajasthanis call it ‘bhurat’. I call it death by puncture. My toes feel like thimbles.

That venue is definitely out.

But how do you shift to a new venue 20 days before the festival?

Perfect. Now if we can only move those hills a couple kilometers to the right...

The existing layout cannot be retro-fitted to the new location. The crests and troughs in these dunes are completely different. You can either cluster everything into pockets or you can spread them far apart. Neither is ideal.

Then again, the layout cannot be changed much either. Both the functional and the creative aspects of the layout would be compromised. It has already been planned to the last detail; estimates have been drawn up and vendors notified.

So the team spent three days walking across the dunes with tape measures, sticks and rope to find the perfect spot for the festival. Always with the sun beating down on you.

It’s been exhausting.

When the logistics work out, the vision doesn’t. Same the other way around. You have a great spot with access to a water reservoir and flat land where you can pitch tents, but the dunes are too low. At another spot, the stretch of dunes is too narrow. (It was a kilometre.) At yet another, everything is perfect but there’s no road for two kilometres.

There better be some water beyond this dune. Or rum.

After tramping around for more feet, metres and kilometres than one should have to keep track of, Batman and Kaptaan flipped over the immense layout they were carrying and finally sketched out a new one.

The Morio stage should be seen from afar. The residential campsite should not be disturbed by late night music. The medical tent should be accessible by all. Mind where you place the loos. And the beverages. Restaurants. Generators. Activity Tents. The layout is re-designed step by step.

At 3:30 pm, Batman claps his hands.

“People, we have a festival site.”

Breakfast of Champions

 Poha, Parathas, Maggi, Toast, Butter, Jam, Chai.

Ragasthan Unit One. Ground Zero.

Don't just sit there. #GetUpAndGo

"I'm Batman?"

Holy identity crisis, Batman. Yes, it is you.

Batman has discovered the blog. But not his own nickname. Kaptaan has clicked through it, but he doesn't read much. He's dealing with a crisis of his own. He can't find his debit card and his Blackberry has gone to cellphone heaven. Not good things to happen when you're reaching into your pocket to set up a festival.

Big Tony reads the blog. He is worried about potentially sensitive information leaking out to the world. How can we talk about a man as big as Tony missing his wife, for instance? Blasphemy!

This is why we have nicknames. Why corrode someone's street cred?

Still, here's a quick vis-a-vis before the next unit gets here (that's on the first of November) and we lose track of who's who (the entire crew list goes up to a hundred people).

From left to right,

Batman - high functioning nocturnal superhero, secretly a human being. The festival's proud (and sleep-deprived) daddy.

Deputy R - techie, production crew. This means he sends all the mails and makes all the Excel sheets. Heh heh.

Deputy V - fixer, production crew. Last seen by the dunes, crushed under a heavy bag carrying water for the entire team.

Sheriff - badge of steel, heart of gold. Keeps duties on deadlines and the deputies on their toes. Usually with a smile and a hug.

Deputy H - transport, production crew. Smoothing the bumps on the Road to Ragasthan and making the Caravan a fun ride.

Stage - blogger, free rider. He's been kicking ass and taking names. Actually just taking names.

Kaptaan - pirate captain, producer, philosopher. Steering the festival ship through uncharted territory onward to the sandy shore.

Big Tony - go-to-guy, local production crew. Hard working young man with an old village saying for every occasion.

The invisible man between Stage and Kaptaan is me.

I'm Back.

Not in the picture,

Grand Meister - local coordinator, library of wisdom. The man who knows everything there is to know about Jaisalmer. And beyond.

That's all for now. Do I hear a round of applause?

In bed, in Motion

Batman isn't here. He must be at the venue with Sheriff, Big Tony and Deputy H. I heard them making plans for the day from inside the tent loo. I wonder when they left, though. I must have slept that part.

Another part of the team is in the city.

I saw them leave earlier today, five of them in one car.

Deputy V and Deputy R must be running around with their pocket diaries in tow. They have been at it for days now, striking things off on most fronts. I am bloody envious of their zeal.

Back must be writing at a fort restaurant. The man was pissed with the internet here. He says he wants Wi-Fi at the festival, demands it in fact.

Grand Meister, if I remember correctly, had an afternoon appointment with some district dignitary. He must be there, getting local administration on our side. He is a smooth talker.

Kaptaan had banking troubles to sort, an ATM card he lost nobody knows when. Poor guy looks really incapacitated without it. He must be filling forms to get one back.

I wonder when to expect them back. I can't miss out on an entire day of activity.

It's sick. I am sick. I am in bed. I ate something I shouldn't have.

I am shitting gallons.

God help this blog!

Deserted

'Kitne aadmi the?'

No TV. No radio. No internet.

We've moved to the campsite.

Life is suddenly like something out of Sholay. Must buy a harmonica.

Always on the Move

There are dust-bunnies collecting in this hotel room. And there’s laundry collecting in my bag. It has been packed, strapped and ready to go for longer than I can wear the same shirt without washing it.

This is NOT a John Denver song

“We are moving to the site.”

When?

“Tomorrow.”

It’s been this way for... weeks, is it? Something or the other always comes up. Today it was Batman. We were supposed to proceed to the dunes the minute he got here. We waited for him all day. The team caught a few rare winks on the shift.

In the evening, we ambled out a few minutes too late to catch the Dussehra celebrations at the stadium. So Stage and I had breakfast instead.

It was seven by the time Batman made an entrance.

Our 10x10 room hosted a rapid-fire exchange of updates between 10 people. Bus tickets are on sale, but now the air-fares are falling. Swiss Tents are selling fast. They’ll need to build a bigger village. Do they spring for a headliner or do they put that budget also into production? If the Caravan buses take longer halts, should the carpool convoy be forced to do the same?

Dinner and back. The conversation trickles down only by 2 am.

“I’ve slept very little in the last three days,” says Batman.

So what’s the plan for tomorrow?

We are moving to the site.

When?

7 am.

Upside down

That is not voodoo, people. Nowhere close to it. That is not a tribe symbol either. And no, that is definitely not a man holding a stick.

That my dear friends, is a map. Kaptaan drew many such at Kanoi. While we were busy drooling over the dunes, he was quietly laying it out to accommodate all festival elements. On the move. On the fly. A new map around every bend. Big Tony was clearly impressed. It was smart, proactive, efficient.

It proved infectious too. Like a bug, one that increases your propensity to wisely utilise time and resources available to you. It is a bug even I can't escape. I have now begun scribbling notes on tissue napkins while I wait for my meal to arrive.

My world is turning upside down.

The bat arrives

Batman is here.

I am too psyched to type.

Feel like that

It is a new day. It should feel like that.

'I want this to become a tradition. It deserves to. Years from now, I see this festival becoming as much a part of Rajasthan's glory as Rajasthan itself. People will be waiting for it the day it gets over, lining up for next year. It will get ingrained in their lives, their systems. It will, at some point, cease being just an event and become a phenomenon instead. It must. It has to. That is exactly where Ragasthan is headed. To eternal renown'.

Grand Meister is ecstatic today. The festivities have made him a new man.

It is a new day.

You know his name

There is only one man, dude. Diego Armando Maradona.

Srulik Astrachan doesn't want Maradona in his team. He knows what he is talking about. He insists on it. Sheriff doesn't like that, not one bit. He swears by the Argentinean.

It is a strange conversation. We are picking fantasy soccer teams. Six of us at La Puerta Del Sol, a rooftop restaurant inside the fort. Yours truly, Kaptaan, Sheriff, Back and our new friends from Israel, young boys Srulik and Dor Mirakam.

It's a mad ride.

'Beckham? What, you want a team that looks good on a poster? Who's next, Frank Lampard'?
'In your dreams, buddy. My team will kicks your team's ass - in the face. 11 out of 10 times'.
'No Roberto Carlos? You must be nuts. That guy is a beast. It's not even funny'.

Nuts, really.
Sheriff is especially livid. Nobody picked Maradona, you see. Probably just to test his patience. Why else would you not pick him?

'I don't have anything to say to you guys except that there is only one man. You know his name'.

The Heat is On

We made a couple of Israeli friends at brunch. We've been telling them about the festival. They love the idea. They'll do a quick trip around the country and come back for it. The weather's going to be great at that time. Not like today. Today is a scorcher.

Sheriff points to the blinding mid-day sun.

"That thing's going to fall down. And then the moon will come up. It's going to be fabulous."
"Yes... the same thing happens in Israel."

This team is seriously overworked. Somebody get a beer, quick.

Staged

Out here in the desert, even I can be tall, dark and handsome.

Twinkle, Twinkle

Last night, we slept beneath a sheet of stars. Some came free from the tapestry and went shooting across a cinemascope sky.

I didn't wish on any. Stage got that wrong.

It didn't occur to me at all. I was too enchanted. And tired.
I curled up under a quilt and let the pale moonlight bathe over me instead.

We had been treading sand all day, walking up and down the immense Kanoi Dunes till the sun turned scarlet and sank into the desert. Kanoi is a sea of sand dunes. Golden humps of velvet sand as far as the eye can see. The valleys between the dunes form cosy natural coves and arenas. No better craftsmanship than of Nature itself.

It's perfect for the festival. It's as if this was meant to be.

The best thing about walking on sand dunes is falling down

By evening, we were at Prince Desert Camp by Laxmana Dunes. Celebrations were in order. A collective sigh of relief turned into a round-table meeting that unravelled in a story-telling session. It went on past midnight. Nobody noticed the candles going out.

"A year from now, we'll all be sitting right here," says Grand Meister. "And we'll all think back to this night."
"Yes, except that next year we won't be so stressed out," laughs Kaptaan. "Next year, everything will be sorted."

I'm not so sure. Next year it's going to be even bigger. It's going to be a challenge one way or another. It should be, too. Nothing easy is ever worth doing.

There are so many castles in the sky here. And they're mostly made of desert-sand and mirages.
I'm just glad I have a front-seat view to watch them turn real day by day.

What more could I wish for?

No melancholy

Kaptaan raises us a toast.
It is really good to have him back. We need his exuberance to sail forth.

Sheriff speaks at length about too many things - Indian independence, independence itself, education, religion, Ragasthan, yoga, Shiva. Too many things. He is probably just so amped that sitting back is freaking him out. Who's to tell?
He talks.

Back wishes upon a shooting star. He looks like a happy fucking kid. It's beautiful to see a man nearing 30 look like that.

Grand Meister appears to have given in to fatigue. He doesn't say much at all, just sits still and listens to Sheriff very intently.
Diabetes has only reflected poorly on his stamina, not his listening skills.

Big Tony misses his wife. He plays some Ghulam Ali on his phone.
Nobody really gets his drift.
We are a happy bunch awaiting a mad adventure. Melancholy isn't our thing right now. 

Shifting Dunes

Holy last minute miracles, Batman!

They're changing the venue.

They've got less than a month in hand. They've got everything set up for work to begin on ground. Architectural layouts have been prepared for the entire festival so there'd be no confusion when production starts. They've been marking out plots on the site already.

When Grand Meister suggested they should take a look at this other site, that's all it was. Just a look. Batman had been to this site last year anyway when he was scouting for locations. It was surrounded by farm-lands then.

So we jumped in for a short ride to the dunes. We got back only today.

No question about it. They're changing the venue.

So much of the layout will have to be redesigned. Plans will need to get pimped and polished, estimates broken down and rebuilt.

"And some of it will have to be done on the fly," says Kaptaan.

They have barely three weeks to go.

Not a frown an any face, though. Gajender Singh is beaming. He will have to shift the entire campsite village a few kilometers to the east if they do this. Away from his current setup where he has electricity and plumbing already figured out.

But they're going to make it happen.

"Hona hai toh hona hai. Karna hai toh karna hai," says Sheriff. "Khalaas!"

Why? Because this is an offer you can't refuse.

Because the new venue looks like this.

What we need

Kaptaan walks over to another dune bed. He is but a moving silhouette. There is an evening sun behind him, an early moon in front. As he walks back, his features get clearer. His tattoos glisten in the sun. One more than the rest, though. This one adorns the left of his midriff.

It says - parivartan sansar ka niyam hai.
Change is what drives the world.

He walks further towards us, a smile planted on his bearded face, clears his throat and says, 'this venue is banging, bro. This is exactly what we need. What say, we shift it here'?

We nod our heads in agreement. We are enamoured.
It is banging, bro.

Speechless

Breath. Taken.

A quick preview before we follow the team to brunch. This is where we were yesterday.

This is the festival site. God. THIS is the festival site!

Not Tonight

We came to the desert. And we're not going back tonight.

It's no fun mistyping on the phone when a million stars vie for your attention. Some of them by drawing trails of light across the inky canvas sky.

No posts for the day.

The Local Flavour

A strange problem.

It's going to be difficult to get local food at the festival.

They're getting catering services from Delhi and Mumbai. A highly recommended friend of a friend is helping with Continental food from Pushkar. He'll take the plunge. He'll move his setup here five days before tourist season peaks at Pushkar.

But not food stalls or restaurants at Jaisalmer. At least not at this time. Not during the festival - right after Diwali and right before Pushkar Mela. Tourists will be queueing up at their stalls anyway. And they don't have the manpower to expand.

Grand Meister says that they have trouble feeding their own guests during the Diwali season. Lines snake outside restaurants, often mixing with other such lines. People wait hours for the wrong meal to be brought to them.

Most places here have only one small kitchen and one cook. Some places, the cook doubles as the waiter.

"So, what, then? We have to get Rajasthani food made somewhere else and then get people dressed up as Rajasthanis to serve them? In Jaisalmer?"

This is ridiculous.

Skyfall

“Skyfall is releasing, na? Hey, we must watch Skyfall.”

I tell Sheriff that I’m not too keen on watching Bond drink beer. Besides, we won’t get to watch it till the 

festival is over and we’re back home.

“Aren’t there any theatres here?”

There is. It’s screening The Expendables 2. In Hindi.

Guns don't kill people. Movies like these do.

I don't care. I know I’ll be watching Marley, Dekh Indian Circus, Road, Movie, 12 Monkeys and La Jetee. On the dunes. Under shooting stars. A totally different kind of skyfall, that. 

Of course, there seems to be a movie unfolding as we speak. Everywhere we go, we’re asked when we’re shooting. We’ve grown tired of explaining it’s not a film. It’s a 3-day festival. On the dunes. Ragasthan.

“Where is the location?”

“It’s a festival – art, music, culture festival. Near Sam Dunes.”

“So there will be cameras?”

“Err... yes.”

“So you’re the production people?”

I wonder if they’ll be expecting this movie to release some day.

It wouldn’t be half bad.

Energy on a plate

Breakfast at five in the evening, or is it lunch? Nobody really knows. It's just food for now, energy on a plate - mere sustenance. That is all that matters, all we need. If we could skip our meals and still have the strength to go on, we wouldn't bother with this drivel.

Deputy R says we've got to learn a few tricks from those humpback cuties. He is a bright kid, that one. He means well.

We place our orders in sickening haste. Strange requests one after the other. The waiter, Krishna, wants to have nothing to do with us. Poor guy can't even make sense of our choices. Well, neither can I, but these are trivial matters right now.
Food cannot be thought about. There's no time for such indulgence.

We eat noodles with dal fry, butter nan with sliced onions and fried rice with Coke. The combine is profoundly idiotic but we are too far up our asses to care. Between payments and delays and timelines, there isn't much space to fit even a comb.

We finish our meal like an ill-fated formality. Bills are paid. Hands are washed. Not a second is wasted.

Dinner is next.
Pasta with fresh lassi?

Money Matters

So... how many zeroes was that?

They're going through a rather long checklist at a meeting before brunch. Tick-marks on most items.

Astronomical numbers are exchanged. Numbers with ‘rupees’ attached to them. Everybody wants some. Advances, deposits... shagun!

“Everything is in place,” says Sheriff. “Now we need to put the money where the mouth is.”

It’s a big mouth to feed.

There are sky-high plans in motion. But it’s still a baby festival. There are no big sponsors. It’s not easy to pull sponsors to a debut festival unless you have corporate clout behind you. Besides, music festivals have turned into a business. There’s more than one happening every month on an average.

And then there’s Ragasthan, which is not really a music festival.

Batman says that music is only 25% of the festival. That doesn’t make it any easier for sponsors. There’s no template, and therefore no proven record of success for this kind of thing in India.

Few people take chances on a dream. Those who do, share the dream.

Others ask for obscene amounts of money for it. They call it a security deposit.

Not too secure, these kinds of people.

The Magistrate's Moustache

Sheriff and Big Tony meet a scary guy. He is actually a magistrate of known nobility. Some believe he hasn't shaved his moustache in years. The guys are visibly terrified. He has that air about him, you see. Shirt buttoned down almost to his chest, neck heavy with gold and beads and hands that are heavier than a pick-up truck.

He is a gangster from their worst nightmares.

The two fight their fears and gather the will to speak. They try to keep calm and talk business. Things go well. The magistrate is a good laugh, they soon find out. He actually seems like a very kind man now.

They discuss Ragasthan at length. Big Tony has a lot to say.
At one point, Sheriff points out how no local caterers agree on paying security deposits against the festival space they wish to rent. It baffles him. The magistrate doesn't see why. He says it is ridiculous of us to even expect a deposit. Nobody would ever agree, it seems. Not in a million years. He is pretty certain about that.

So much so that he swears it on his moustache!
That's got to mean something.

On standby

Sheriff says he is on standby. He is waiting for a green flag from Batman.

Where the hell is Batman, anyway?