L10 COVERSATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM
LOUNGE COVER L11SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM
LOUNGE
INDIA’S BIGGESTINDEPENDENT
BAND HAS A NEWALBUM OUTLATER THIS
MONTH. WE LOOKAT HOW INDIANOCEAN STAYED
TOGETHER, MADEMUSIC AND FACED
THE MOSTCHALLENGING
YEAR OF THEIRTWODECADE
EXISTENCE
B Y K R I S H R A G H A V &
B L E S S Y A U G U S T I N E··························
Af t e r 2 0 y e a r s , f i v ealbums and 700 con-certs around the world,
the members of Indian Oceanare the first to admit they’re fedup of each other.
“No matter where I go in theworld, I have to wake up tothese faces every single day. It’sas terrible as being married,”says 48-year-old Susmit Sen,dressed in a full-sleeve T-shirtand corduroy pants, clouded ina haze of cigarette smoke.
The Indian Ocean guitarist,short hair parted neatly side-ways, is lounging backstagebefore a concert at Dr DY PatilCollege, Nerul, Navi Mumbai.It’s a rare quiet moment for theformer advertising executive,between hours of tedious soundchecks and a live show.
His bandmates, 36-year olddrummer Amit Kilam and46-year old bassist Rahul Ram,are watching the fashion showfrom backstage, while a crowdof 20-year-old college studentsdrifts in and out of the audito-rium. In spite of being India’sbiggest independent band, theirentourage is minimal, andthey’re more than happy toblend in with the crowd.
The concert, held on 20 Janu-ary, was the band’s second aftervocalist Asheem Chakravarty’suntimely demise on 25 Decem-ber. When Chakravarty wastaken ill on the final leg of their2009 world tour, the band hadbeen hopeful of his recovery.His loss was sudden, and theband members answer ques-tions about him matter-of-factly, in short, curt sentences.
“It’s a huge loss,” says drum-mer Kilam. “But we’re doingconcerts, so we’re already get-ting used to not having him per-
form with us.” Experimentingwith a new line-up, IndianOcean went on to play in fourIndian cities across Februaryand March, before taking abreak to finish their upcomingseven-song album 16/330 Kha-joor Road, their first in fiveyears. After numerous delays,the album is due out on 25 July,and with typical Indian Oceancommercial indifference (theband makes most of its moneyfrom concerts), will be free fordownload from their website.
Age is on Sen’s mind. Theband has gone through muchemotional turmoil over sixmonths—a flux that has threat-ened their stoic two-decadeexistence. Between the distantdin of pounding bass music andthe occasional spikes of loudcheers from the audience, hesays: “There’s this dialogue inthe film Jalwa where Naseeru-din Shah tells his senior, ‘Aadmiaur achaar mein farak hota hai’.I love this line. Age has nothingto do with maturing. I’m notsure if I have matured with age.”
For a band that doesn’t shyaway from exploring complexpolitical and environmentalthemes, their irreverence is justas famous. Ask their manager,or the bands that have travelledwith them in the past, and theyall say the same thing: Here’s agroup that can be profound andsilly in the same breath, a groupwithout “an iota of serious-ness”. Serious debates at theirpractice space in Delhi’s KarolBagh (whose address is the newalbum’s title) can descend intofarce at a moment’s notice, andnothing is beyond the reach ofa bad joke.
The phrase “chilled out” isevoked often, even though theband still does close to 80 showsa year, with about 30 of themoutside the country. “People
say that art comes out of 5% tal-ent and 95% sweat,” says Sen.“But for creativity, I think themost important thing is to relax.I wouldn’t call it inspiration butjust the ability to relax to allowself-expression.”
There’s an age-agnostict i m e l e s s n e s s a b o u t t h e i rmusic as well. The fan favour-ite Kandisa, from the 2000album of the same name,channels a millennia-old Ara-maic hymn, while the politi-cally charged Bandeh, one ofthe few Indian Ocean songs toreceive healthy radio airplay,ends with a loud, raucous, dis-torted electric guitar solo.
“Being part of the bandm a k e s m e f e e l s l i k e I ’ menjoying youth again. Andthis time without any inhibi-tions,” Sen says, shrugging. “Iguess when you’re creativeyou don’t grow old.”
Watering holeThe story of how Indian Oceancame to be involves the pre-Par-tition Delhi mansion on Kha-joor Road in Karol Bagh wherePakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faizattended poetry sessions, a manwith a mosquito swatter, and anerrant South African emu.
Sen met Chakravarty in 1984,and the duo jammed and builttheir sound over the next fewyears, playing the occasionalsmall gig. Chakravarty was amathematics graduate whobecame a soil investigator forconstruction sites. Sen, who’dstudied economics and man-agement, worked with an adver-tising firm and left his job onlyafter Indian Ocean’s first albumwas released many years later.“I did pretty well. I would havebeen one of those successfultypes. Richer but unhappy.”
The name Indian Ocean, sug-gested by Sen’s father, stuck in
1990, and the band recorded ademo tape with a line-up thatthen consisted of ShaleenSharma on drums, IndrajitDutta and Anirban Roy on bass.The tape impressed HMVenough for it to agree to analbum. By this time, bassistRahul Ram had joined theranks, and the album, simplycal led Indian Ocean , wasrecorded with the help of“crummy mikes” and a “sozzledsound recordist” in Kolkata.
The album’s release, how-ever, was mired in a Byzantinebureaucratic web, and gotpushed back continuously.When it finally released in 1993,it was a rare moment—a cas-sette of original songs by anIndian band that was devoid ofcovers or Bollywood histrionics.
“When Asheem and I startedout, we were convinced it wouldlast. We were told that bandscan’t do original numbers, thatif we needed to survive we’dhave to play famous Hindisongs. Perhaps we were the firstto compose our own songs. Forus, music was always moreimportant than churning outsongs,” says Sen.
T h e b a n d h a s a l w a y stightly reined in their output,not releasing songs unti lt h e y ’ r e d e e m e d “ r e a d y ” .Indian Ocean’s collectiveoutput has resulted in about30 songs in 26 years.
T h e b a n d ’ s s i g n a t u r eline-up—Kilam, Ram, Sen andChakravarty—was finalized in1994. Kilam, then only 20 andstill juggling exams with drumpractice, joined after ShaleenSharma’s departure. A fewyears of touring later, theirD e s e r t R a i n a l b u m w a sreleased in 1997, a live record-ing of the 1997 Sahmat concertat Mandi House, which theband had actually recorded to
listen to for mistakes.Sanjoy Roy, a director with
independent production com-pany Teamwork Films, wasmanaging the band at the time.He’s not sure of the year hestarted, but says it was around“15-16 years ago”. “Desert Rainwas a fresh new sound, it wasexperimental—so we had onlyone record label willing to dis-tribute it,” he says. “After itbecame popular, for the band’ssecond album a whole bunch ofthem turned up.”
This behaviour, he says, wassymptomatic of the recordingindustry at the time. “Recordcompanies were not willing toexperiment. If (Alisha Chinai’s)Made in India became a hit, thenext 10 albums they cut wouldsound exactly like Made inIndia,” he says.
Roy remembers a concert atDelhi’s India Habitat Centrearound that time. One recordcompany executive pushed hisway through the crowd to meetthe band. “He said, ‘I love themusic, great concert. We shouldcut an album. But we need to,you know, jazz it up a bit, andplay a few Bollywood songs.’Can you believe that?” Theband’s Bollywood debut wasnearly a decade away at thispoint, and they’d evolve a sim-ple rule on film projects: “Mostdirectors come to us becausethey want ‘Indian Ocean’ music,and not the other way around,”
Sen says. The band has con-tributed the song Des Merafrom their 2003 album Jhini tothe soundtrack of the upcom-ing Aamir Khan-produced filmPeepli Live.
T h e b a n d ’ s s i g n a t u r esound—driven by Sen’s acous-tic guitar and Chakravarty’s per-cussion (the vocals weren’t soprominent back then)—madethe band hard to classify andpigeonhole. “I call it music fromthe roots,” Roy says. “It has aheavy classical component. Notrock, not pop.”
But the rock music landscapeat the time was challenging,dominated by a few big bands.“It was difficult in the early days.It was Parikrama yay, IndianOcean, who? Also, they weren’ta great act…it was great music,but not a great act,” Roy says.
The need to create a stageshow evolved through constanttouring, and Indian Ocean’smusic matured just as theirunderground reputation cameto the fore. Parikrama, on theother hand, let their songwritingstagnate, and Indian Oceansoon overtook them in bothpopularity and critical acclaim.
Times Music signed theb a n d i n 1 9 9 8 , a n d t h e ystepped into a professionalstudio, minus the sozzledrecordist, to record their sec-ond album, Kandisa. Releasedin 2000, the album marked aturning point in the band’s for-
tunes. It was this album thatsaw them tour extensivelythroughout the world.
“We performed this one gig inKalgoorlie, Australia,” says Roy.“ I t w a s a r e a l o n e h i c ktown…with, like, one road goingthrough it, and the concert wasscheduled at an open park rightnext to the local zoo.
“So the guys start playing,and meanwhile, this emu in thezoo, presumably grooving toIndian Ocean music, breaks freeof its cage,” he says. The errantemu charged through the crowdand jumped on stage. “So theaudience is watching in shockas the emu, for some reason,starts chasing Susmit.” After ashort chase and an impasse,Susmit and the emu begansparring in front of the crowd,Sen jabbing at it with his gui-tar. “Let’s face it, he didn’tstand a chance. The emu is ano-nonsense animal. It wasn’tgoing to just let Susmit offeasy!” Thankfully, before anyfurther damage to the emu orSen, the zookeepers arrivedand took the animal away.
Kandisa was a commercialsuccess, and also featuresmost of the band’s trademarktunes—Ma Rewa, based on apaean to the river Narmada,Hille Le, a protest song pennedby activist Gorakh Pandey,and Khajuraho, an 8-minutesong first performed for thenpresident K.R. Narayanan at
the Khajuraho Millenium Fes-tival. It was also the band’sfirst collaboration with lyricistSanjeev Sharma.
WordwiseSharma can’t answer any of ourquestions just yet. At his Mum-bai bungalow courtyard, thetheatre director is constantlydistracted by a swarm of mos-quitoes milling in the eveningair. He excuses himself, disap-pears into the house, and reap-pears with a look of studiouscalm—and a mosquito electroc-utor shaped like a tennis rac-quet. Two minutes of slaughterlater, in which Sharma wavesthe bat as if invoking the spirits,he turns and says, “You’realways going to associate mewith this picture now, no?”
Sharma first met IndianOcean in 1997, when he wasdirecting a musical for Com-pany Theatre. “I wanted some-one to compose the music forthe play. A friend suggestedIndian Ocean. “That’s the firsttime we worked together andwe clicked,” he says. “Offstage,they’re complete lunatics butonstage, they’re ace performers.They’re like those Kathakaliartistes who get intoxicated,perform pujas and then trans-form themselves on stage.”
Ti l l then, the band wasmostly instrumental, occasion-ally throwing in a folk song ortwo. It’s only after Kandisa,Sharma says, that they startedusing, and paying so muchattention to, words.
The album-opener, KyaMaloom, was written after theKargil war. “(The opening line)Teevra Aandhi Mrityu Gaamicomes from Krishna’s philoso-p h y i n t h e M a h a b h a r a t , ”Sharma says. “Krishna tellsArjun, who is reluctant to fightthe war with his own family,that if you’re detached enough,you can see beauty in the bloodthat has been spilled.”
The band composes thearrangements first, beforeSharma starts work on the lyr-ics. “(The music) has got acertain intoxicating quality toit. A certain earthiness thattugs at your basic instincts.The appeal is something simi-lar to that of folk singers—theyact as mediums to connect toyour own core.”
Sharma’s favourite is the songBhor in the 2003 album Jhini,originally intended for a song ina film by director Ajay Rana.“The brief Rana had given mewas that the character was look-ing for awakening and union atthe same time.”
When the film got cannedand Indian Ocean showedSharma the music they’dcomposed for what wouldbecome Bhor, the lyrics “justtumbled out”.
But in typical Indian Oceanfashion, about four years afterthe song had been written andperformed many times, vocalistChakravarty asked him what thesong meant. “We burst outlaughing. Asheem always sangthe song so soulfully. It’s justone of those mystery zones withthem, they hardly understandwhat they are doing,” he says.
Then and nowBy 2006, Indian Ocean wereindie superstars. The AnuragKashyap film Black Friday, feat-uring their music, was in thea-tres, and the band had success-fully played at concert venuesaround the world. It wouldbegin years of routine for theband—consisting of film pro-jects, world tours and specialconcerts. The band has alsostayed fiercely independent,never letting the gravitas ofstardom get between theirmusic or audience.
“We’ve survived this longb e c a u s e w e w e r e m a t u r eenough to know the differencebetween getting along as peopleand getting along with ideas,”says Rahul Ram. The band stillenjoys playing at small collegevenues and one-off gigs. “Wedon’t mind whether we’re play-ing in an opera house or collegeauditorium,” Ram says. “In anopera house, the audience isquiet but you know they’re con-centrating a lot more on yourmusic. In a college auditorium,there’s more frenzy; it encour-ages you to be more energetic.”
Current manager DhruvJagasia recalls a story that hesays best exemplifies IndianOcean’s spirit. In 2007, a stu-dent from a metallurgy collegein Bihar (whose name Jagasiacan’t recall) came knocking onhis door. “He told me that thestudents of his college had beensaving Rs100 a day for two yearsto be able to collect money tocall Indian Ocean for a perfor-mance.” They had saved Rsl.5lakh and asked Jagasia if it wasenough to get the band to per-form. “I was so touched by itthat I agreed to get the bandfor that much money. As partof cost cutting, we even trav-e l l e d b y t r a i n a n d a s k e dfriends in Bihar to donatelights and other equipment.”
The band played there for 3hours. The boys of the corecommittee, in charge of thisplan, stood as security guardssince they couldn’t afford secu-rity. The band, moved by thewhole experience, played exclu-sively for the committee boysafter the main concert. “Weeven treated them to boozelater. We ended up spendingmore than earning. Things likethese humble me,” says Jagasia.
OCEAN’STHREE
MUSIC
} ~People say that art comes out of 5%
talent and 95% sweat. But forcreativity, I think the most important
thing is to relax.
Bandwidth: (clockwise from left)Lead guitarist Susmit Sen,drummer Amit Kilam andbassist Rahul Ram; the trioat a concert in Singapore on 3July; and the original lineup(vocalist Asheem Chakravartyis in white) at their practicepad in Delhi’s Karol Bagh.
HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINTPUSHKAR KANHERE/MINT
KAUSHIK CHAKRAVORTY/MINT
KAUSHIK CHAKRAVORTY/MINT
KAUSHIKCHAKRAVORTY/MINT
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