Zakir+Shivkumar

Feeling like a celebrity.. My birthday celebrations have already started! After the launch of Friends' Society 10 years back, my birthday has been dissolved in the FS celebration. This year, when I am away from Pune, it seems, the birthday is back on track!

With a couple of friends joining me yesterday night for "Save Earth" hour, they surprised me by gifting three bottles of "Grey Goose." (One of the best I've had...) The whole day was celebration, started wiht lunch with Ahmed (the Iraqi journalist), and then visit to his studios, and then the dark evening with friends! Today, I woke up pretty late, and had my personal "official birthday" plans! A gift I gifted myself, a ticket to Zakir Hussain and Shivkumar Sharma concert at Duke!


Exhilarating... Breathtaking... Elemental... Pure... Erotic...

All the adjectives will short fall of describing the concert experience. Have you ever forgotten breathing, and then suddenly realized that you need to breath? have your eyes been so concentrated on what you are seeing that you literally have lost vision beyond the focal point? Have your ears been in resonation with what they are listening, so much so that there's no other voice heard? Have the every cell in your body vibrated such that you can feel those vibrations in your blood stream?

I experienced all of this today.. Much more.. Tabla has always attracted me, rather, as a child, I had tried my hands on it too.. Needless to say, it was a big failure, but my ears loved the rythm. Since then I had adream, a dream to see Zakir Hussain live. While in Pune, he had visited the city once, but the expensive passes were out of reach, and the the massive crowds scared me off. Here, in an auditorium of a 1000 people, sitting in seat K-104, I was living one of my childhood dreams!

Birthday ho, toh aisa... Let's see, what next 3 days have to bring.. [gifts, chocolates, any and everything is welcome.. ;)]