f-f-friday

This was a very odd day but I will attempt to tell you about.

I woke up feeling pissy for some reason (oh wait, like every other day), a feeling only intensified by the disarray of the office. A few guys were sitting in the room with the computer I use glowering and looking irritated, and I found it hard to ignore them as I attempted to research my damn world music page or whatever. I sent a few emails then dis-contentedly went off to wander, mainly because the cleaning lady kept on tapping me on the shoulder and requesting bubble gum NOW.

I encounter Louise in the lobby, who was attempting to rally people to go to the India Rocks Megadeth concert - the historical very first time Megadeth has ever played in india (what distinction!). She asked me if I cared to join her. Now, my life philosophy is generally to stumble blindly into weirdness whenever weirdness presents itself, and this seemed pretty much ideal. I said yes yes yes. We trolled the office for a bit looking for other takers, found none, and went off with our Indian coworkers. Since they both had motorbikes, Louise and I took on the back of theirs, all the way to the Bangalore Palace Grounds.

Now, I thought I would be scared shitless by this travel arrangement but to my complete surprise it proved to be exhilarating, my hair blowing every which way as weaved dangerously through rickshaws and buses and innocent pedestrians, guys on motorbikes yelling god knows what to me in the crush of traffic. It was such an effortless way to get around, forgoing the usual torturous process of negotiating rickshaw fares or being crammed into unnatural and miserable positions in a sweat-infused bus - this is the way to travel. If I lived here I would get a motorbike. And update my organ donor card.

We stopped briefly to get a huge amount of food for 100 rupees (nothing whatsoever), then arrived at the grounds, a dusty and slightly apocalyptic stretch of nothing in particular. The crowd was rather Woodstock esque, huge numbers of Indian males in their best metal t-shirts lounging around on the grass, sucking down alcohol and smoking copious amounts of weed (you cannot bring such items into the concert.) We parked ourselves on the grass next to a group of young gentlemen smoking up merrily away in an abandoned auto rickshaw, watching a group of wild horses wander among the punk kids.

A small fracas ensued when it turned out I could not take my dinky little camera into the concert grounds because I was not Official Photography Staff, but I managed to convince them to let me in when I threw away the batteries. A large and very drunk Indian man convinced himself I was staring at him and began posturing inexplicably at Louise who, he judged by her pen and paper, was somehow running this whole thing. "Why the fuck can't you bring in booze, maaann?" he slurred at her, and they began arguing until we managed to pull her off.

The concert itself was one of those festival format things that go on for too long, but we found a spot on the foam floor to sit down and watch some Indian metal bands rock out, which they actually did serviceably well. This was interesting enough for a while, but I was beginning to grow slightly concerned by the realization that Louise and I were one of about 20 or so actual women present, and two of four Western women present, which meant the stares were rife and only getting worse since everyone was very very trashed. Now, this is normal, expected behavior at USA metal concerts, but those usually tend to feature more, you know, women. Another issue was that the official sponsor was Royal Challenge whiskey, which meant whiskey was 1. very cheap and 2. very available.

In any case, Louise and I went looking for drinks and found our drunken buddy yet again, who immediately began the argument where it left off. Things went to a head when he called Louise a "bitch" and she immediately went off, smacking him around a bit while the security guards giggled and the guy's friends attempted to pull them apart. She gave in and we went in the other direction and determined that,yeah, it would be a good idea to leave. There was too much rockin' going on.

I returned to the villa after yet another awesome night-time motorbike ride - the parks look great lit up by streelights - and had a nice chicken dinner at the villa. Then we put together some half-assed plans to go out to a swank bar called the 13th Floor, which ended up wanting a 400 rupee cover charge - hell no. And so we ended up at the Guzzlers Inn once again, sucking down pitchers of beer and trying not to think about the stickiness of the floor.