Nothing fazes our stalwart police department. No hidden terrorist’s nest in Kengeri, no bomb scare at the airport, no murder of little ole ladies in Jalvayu Vihar, no organised dacoity, no kidnappings. They handle it all with élan and sweeping confidence without bristling a single hair on their metaphorical moustaches.
But music...aha.. that’s another matter altogether. You see, having been brought up on the cacophony that passes for a police band, they have a blind dread of music. And Live Music? That is the wurrssshht! It’s the devil’s own instrument for corrupting the masses and destroying our Glorious Indian Culture and Heritage (henceforth referred to as GICH in the interest of brevity)
Let us see how the police collective mind from here to Mumbai to Delhi works. Live Music needs a live band... aka living musicians as against dead ones like John Lennon or our very own Mukeshbhai droning on CDs. Live bands need dim lit bars or restaurants, which lead to drinking. This where GICH starts the meltdown process. Not to mention the mass Moral Fibre which begins to develop a distinct sag and an alarming bit of wobble.
So here we are cozying up in a dimly lit restaurant with a live band with live musicians belting away some filmy number. The liquor is flowing and slowly but surely nibbling away like rats into our GICH and softening Moral Fibre like dal cooking in a Prestige pressure cooker.
Enter the inevitable devil in disguise: Scantily clad, sartorially challenged girls. Alas Glorious Indian Culture and Heritage
Tauba Tauba and
Aiyiyo Aiyiyo.
Girls lead to gyrations picked up with painful practice from the latest Kareena Kapoor blockbuster. Oh tempora, Oh mores. (Which may sound lofty in Latin but just means Oh times, Oh customs) Not that one expects times or customs to reply to this polite method of addressing them. But still a writer has to show that she knows a smattering of the classical languages).
Back to the dimly lit place and sartorially challenged girls gyrating to Live Music. And people tippling away and getting their hormones into a tizzy. Then in the same mysterious fashion in which a bird meets up with a bee to crossbreed a beerd; or boy meets girl to live unhappily ever after...
All that gyration according to the police manual, leads to Other Things. Sinister, dire, dark and desperate Other Things which are the most serious yet corrupting influence on our GICHT and which, in the blink of an ogling eye, succeed in reducing our Moral Fibre to quivering half set jelly.
And the police, even after several hundred requisitions to the Home Ministry, have not succeeded in getting chastity belts issued along with the regulation handcuffs, are forced to nip the process that jellifies our Moral Fibre in the bud.
Ban Live Music went out the war cry echoing through the hallowed corridors of policedom terrorising musicians into cowering criminals
So it’s goodbye bars and pubs. Goodbye music. Goodbye good times, goodbye hormones in general and testerosterone in particular. Goodbye happiness. And hello GICHT as preserved and resuscitated by our police.
There remain only two minor issues. All the youngsters evicted from the happening places by 11:30 while they, and the night, are still young, are liable to rush home, and for want of other entertainment, indulge in a serious bout of Other Things. Which, as you now know, is detrimental to both GICHT and our Moral Fibre. Not to mention what it does to our population.
The second problem is that I am baffled: does a police whistle blown after 11:30 at night qualify to be Live Music?
Monday, October 3, 2005
