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.