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?