The Bass Story - As told by Pablo

"Papa I need some money, I am thinking of buying a second hand motorcycle." Adi said, he had already taken a market survey and had an estimate of what he needed.

"Okay," his father replied, warming up to the idea, "Yes I think you would need a bike, would Rs 5000 do?" Unfortunately, though his father had warmed up to the idea, he didn't have much idea about the amount required to buy a second hand two wheeler.

"No Papa! I was thinking about around Rs 15000, I have talked to a few people here and that is around the price that they are asking. Papa I really need a motorcycle..." Adi didn't elaborate on why exactly he did need a motor-bike, but his father assumed it was mainly for going to the classes, and our campus was huge, it wasn't an unreasonable demand.

"Oh, okay, very well. I will deposit the amount you want."

Now it has already been mentioned that Adi had already done a market survey in Benares for second hand bikes, but this market survey had also proved that there was no two wheeler worth buying, he had rejected every offer, either the bike was to old or too costly, not worth spending 15-kay over. There was one time when he got very close to buying one, but Sharma (a puritan/stickler/...) found out glaring errors in the papers of the bikes, it was quite hard to believe a guy's authenticity if he fuddles up on the registration number of the motorcycle in the legal papers.

"Don't buy it, this guy seems to me a con-man." Sharme told Adi, using tact to lower his voice in front of the salesman. And he whisked away Adi from the spot, leaving the con-sales-man dazed and confused.

After around a month of deciding to buy a bike but not being able to for the lack of anything worthwhile, Adi had had enough. He said, "I will not buy a bike and that's final!"

I told him, "BUt ou have (quite literally) money in the bank!"

Adi had a plan, he always had a plan, though the plan maybe flawed or not plausible or an outright streak of genius, but he always had a plan. "I am not going to mention the buying and selling of motorcycles to my parents in the future, and gradually I believe they will forget the whole issue, and I shall spend the money slowly."

Adi might be known to have a plan but if he had money he was known not to have a tendency of even thinking about spending it slowly. He believed in the adage 'Spend today worry tomorrow' or some such cliche. So I figured that the money was going to be used for day-to-day stuff like booze and chicken, but buying a bike was no longer part of the larger picture.

One fine Friday I left to spend the weekend with my cousin brother, leaving the hostel and all my friends intact. In the night I called up Pushpendra to take the general stock fo things.

It came as no surprise that Adi and Alex had gone to Kolkata, or was it Delhi? When I had left the campus Adi was sleeping, and Alex was playing the guitar, there was no question in the near future of them taking a trip out of station.

With Adi, anything is possible . (He was perhaps the inspiration for that other 'Adi's' Impossible is Nothing.)

The full account of their adventure came clear on the following monday, when I saw a shining bass guitar in his room


Adi asked Alex, "So what are you planning to do this weekend?"

Alex answered, "This and that you know, but practically nothing."

"Good, we are going to Kolkata to buy a bass."

"Okay." Alex said, and insterted his wallet in one pocket and a toothbrush in the other.

Author's note-Although this may not have been the exact conversation that started the journey, but this is a 'possible' conversation between the two.


They had no reservations, either for, or about going to Kolkata. Alex had bought his guitar from the city and it was serving him well, and Adi thought since ALex had bought his instrument from there, it would be a good place to buy a bass.

When they entered the station, platform one was empty. However the Varanasi-Delhi Superfast train 'Shivganga' was rolling in slowly. It would depart from the station in another thirty minutes or so.

"You know.." Adi said.

"What?" Alex asked.

"Delhi is as good as Kolkata isn't it?"

"Or maybe better, perhaps."

"So we are on the same train of thought here."

"You mean we do not go to Kolkata?"

"And go to Delhi instead! How about it?"

Alex thought for a while, and decided that going east or west was the same thing, since they were going on a whim anyways.

Adi had decided to take the old defunct bass that was de-assetted by our seniors along in hope of either selling it or getting it repaired, presently he handed it to his travelling companion and said "I am going to get the general class tickets, you go secure seats."

Now which of these two is a more difficult task is open to debate, for a Delhi bound train, the general class compartment is always overflowing with human life and limb often seeping through the doors and the window grills, also Alex had Mr. Bass with him, a troublesome customer in a black casket case, and then there was the added responsibilty of securing an extra seat for the other Mr. Bass, Adi.

He somehow squeezed through the humanity and found two seats, on one he prostrated his luggage, and on the other he spread himself as far as he could, trying to fight the maddenning crowd. It helped that Alex was tall and strong, and he held the people at bay. He waited for five minutes for Adi.

Then he waited for ten.

And then a further ten minutes. Now the area that he defended had shrunk to become smaller than what would be sufficient for two people, still he struggled. A scary thought entered his mind, "Is Adi coming at all? I mean, he is whimsical, it's quite possible that he might have seen a long line at the ticket counter, and thought that it's not worth the effort, and having already forgotten about Alex might already be on an auto-rickshaw back to the college."

His fears were confirmed when the train started to move and there was no sign of Adi.

He mentally started cursing him, and thought of ways to get back, of course there was the option of getting off at the city-station, but he was not going to let Adi get away!

And as he mentally pictured inflicting torture on him, presently he saw him in person looking slightly annoyed, a very small ripple in his cool demeanour.

"Where were you?" Adi asked him. "I have been looking all over for you!"

Alex grumbled, but kept his peace.

The travelling-duo somehow made the journey to Delhi, sleeping in fits but generally keeping awake because of the lack of space. There was even the question of going to the loo, but that wasn't possible, since it would be foolish to leave prime seats.

However, the trip to Delhi was fruitful, though they could not get rid of the old bass, they bought a new one which was good (bought from the Adi-Bike-Trust Fund).

While returning they had for no particular reason a brainwave that it would be better to cover the 12 hour train journey by Bus, Adi planned that they would take a break at Kanpur, and hence reduce the effective journey time.

Sadly, they didn't know that the Bus journey from Delhi to Kanpur itself taked twelve hours.

Or that busses aren't a very comfortable mode of travel either.

Late in the night Adi awake when he felt water drops on his cheek, he found that the skies had decided to make their return journey eventful by pouring down on a biblical scale. He shifted slightly, closed the window and tried to sleep again.

He awoke around half an hour later to find that the floor of the bus had become a very shallow water tub, he turned to Alex who was also amongst the people who find it hard to sleep with their feet immersed in water. They both looked at the bass case, and realized that that too was a couple inches submerged.

"My bass!" Adi shouted.

"The case!" Alex said.

It turned out that there was a leak of some sorts in the roof of the bus, which had been effective in flooding the floor. They cursed their luck, and set forward to their second night of fitful sleep.

Arriving in Kanpur they assessed the damage, thankfully the only thing that was in a bad shape was the coffin case, the bass was pretty much okay.

It was a good stroke of luck that two of our classmates from Kanpur were returning to college, one of them being PC, the other being Pranshu.

And so that night, on the train journey back to Benares it was PC and Pranshu who stayed awake, or slept in fits, while Adi and Alex slept comfortably on borrowed seats.

"Is this where you guys...practice?"

My first meeting with the band made me realize two things

1) They had a serious lack of talent, but not ambition
2) I shouldn't rush into considering them for my write up

The second thing was because a day after my interview when I had returned to my city A--- Pablo started calling me almost every hour asking me when the interview would be published in my magazine ***. And twice I could distinctively hear Alex in the background saying "Dude ask him whether we would be paid for the interview."

I hadn't really mentioned that I wanted to cover a totally new band to the powers-that-be at the magazine, and I hadn't even see them play till now. I placated them by saying that I wanted to take pictures of them practicing before I gave my article to the magazine, and with a promise to come back a month later I requested them to leave me in peace.

When I returned to their city, they asked me to come late in the night to see them practice. This wasn't an odd request, most rock bands I have met prefer practicing from after hours to the waking hours. As arranged I went to Pablo's hostel room at 10 in the night. He was glad to see me and in way of greeting asked me, "Where is your digi-cam?"

I didn't want to disappoint the poor fellow by telling him that presently I had no desire to click their photographs, so I said, "Well I do have a cell phone that has a camera. I will click your photographs."

He was a bit surprised, "Will the magazine accept cell phone photographs? Look I can arrange a digital camera for you if you want to, I mean someone in the hostel must have it."

I came to the point, "Look, the photographs are not important, tonight I want to see you guys in action so that I can write a proper review."

Pablo promptly went out in search of his band members, we found Adi sleeping, Alex practicing, PC talking on the phone ("Practice? Right now? No one told me!" He said, "Well I am telling you now. Get ready." "Okay," he said, "Just give me five minutes to water my hair.") And then we found the drummer studying.

"Sorry yaar Pablo, the tests are just a week away, and it will be too much of a time waste...Can't we do it after the test?"

Pablo whispered something in his ears but I could easily make out words like 'magazine' and 'exposure' etc. The drummer reluctantly agreed.

"The problem is," Pablo said, "Our drummer is one of the toppers in class, and thus doesn't really devote much time to practice. He is good though, classic beat sense, impeccable timing."

I looked at my watch and saw that the whole gathering the band exercise had taken a good part of half an hour. Finally Broken Tooth was ready for practice. Alex said, "We'll have to borrow one guitar, the jack in mine isn't working."

This was a typical raw band, they had little equipment to call their own, but I liked the fact that they took the pain to arrange stuff. "So where is your practice room? In some hostel? In your hostel?"

"No, it's in the gymkhana building. We have a spare key to practice in the night." PC said.

The said building was located in the corner of a cricket ground which was surrounded by a fence. We walked to the main gate of the ground and I waited for someone to produce a key. Instead, Alex, PC and Adi slipped in their guitars from under the gate and started climbing through a hole in the fence.

"You see, we do have the key to the practice room but we are not given the key to the main gate. Because of some red tape etc."

The practice room was covered with dust and pigeon droppings. There were broken chairs, and speakers that looked pretty ancient. They were huge, but ancient.

"Is this where you guys...practice?" I asked them, looking around the accoustically bad and un-hospitable surroundings.

"Yeah," Pablo said, grinning from ear to ear, "It's a beauty, isn't it?"

"Tama drumkit! That's impressive." I said. There was a big Tama sticker on the bass drum, the high hat and crash cymbal didn't look much but the whole kit looked nice. And then I proceeded to check out the drum kit, being a bit of an amateur drummer myself.

It turned out that there were only two pieces of the drums that were Tama, the Bass drum and the floor Tom, the rest were local drums covered with skins bearing the markings of 'Abdul Wajih Band.'

Himanshu the drummer sat on the make shift stool behind and said, "There's a hole in the snare drum, someone messed it up."

Pablo started letting off a string of insults at loads of people who could fall in the catagory of 'someone', Adi ignored his tirade and said coolly, "Flip it over dude, use the other head."

A closer inspection of the crash cymbal looked like someone had taken a bite off it, or perhaps there were termites here with some heavy duty diet. The band took it's time tuning the guitars, while the vocalist tried to make himself useful but mostly got in the way of people, I sat at the edge of a wooden table and made notes on my spiral book.

After ear splitting feedbacks and a constant humming from the microphone (which was put up on a plastic stand that could not survive the mic's weight, I don't know what purpose it served) the band looked ready for practice.

"Right, what would you like to hear?" Pablo asked me confidently.

"What do you mean what would he like to hear?" Alex asked him, "We do only one song correctly."

Pablo hissed, "I am aware of that guitarist of mine...he would have said 'Anything' and we would have played our song...it's etiquette, or something."

I said, "It's okay guys, play whatever you are comfortable with."

And 'play' they did. With a four stick-check they started off with 'Rolling Stone's' Satisfaction.' At first I couldn't make out anything in the din because of the bad quality of the speakers, but when I distanced myself a bit from the players and went to the balcony, I heard the song clearly. And for a new band, they were playing the song (which was perhaps the only song they knew at that time) rather well. Satisfaction is a simple song, but its a high energy song, and with repeat playings they got better. I smiled, and realized that perhaps for my study I hadn't made a bad choice after all.

After the practice I asked them, "How do you guys co-ordinate? I mean when you can hardly hear yourself play, especially over the drums." Each one of them had a formula.

"I just lip read whatever Pablo is singing." Alex said.

"I follow Alex's hand positions on the fret board." Pablo said.

"I too, follow Alex." Adi said.

"I obviously play from the heart." PC said

"I count the beats in my mind for each cycle." Himanshu the drummer said, and then he added, "Can we wrap up now please? I have got to study loads."

Ah, well...so much for music theory.

"Right, So where were we?"

Hello, my name is Nikhil Kumar, I am a rock journalist. Well, and that's pretty much it. I get paid by my magazine (which I am not allowed to name on this web-log for purposes of copy right and money)enough to travel around, eat food, and live off a suitcase. Earlier I have followed and written about Nutcase-Champagne and WeSuckTooMuch, and generic heavy metal rockers like I Kill, Murdurous Thugs and the like. But these were bands that had already established themselves in some way, and were situated in places like Delhi, Bangalore, Bombay etc.

I read about this band called Broken Tooth (On orkut, of all places) who were situated in Benares, and having heard highly of BHU rockers from my magazine editor who during his college days had often performed in IT-BHU and called it the Mecca of rock in East UP (Kashi/Mecca...go figure).

I contacted this guy 'Pablo', got his phone number from someplace, and the first thing he told me put me off a bit, Pablo wasnt his real name, not his official name anyway. I told him that I wanted to meet him and interview him and/or his band mates, and get to know what it is like to form a band. He was quite eager (and I believe, I don't know what leads me to think of this, but still, that he was jumping on the other end of the phone) and said that he would be glad to meet me and have pics taken and get published and famous, and I found an excuse to cut the phone at that time.

I first met the band three years ago, I went to Benares, took a room at a small hotel and in the name of Rock and Roll went to meet Broken Tooth.


"Right, so where were we?" Pablo said, keeping his glass of tea next to him.
"You were telling me about the whole idea, the concept, the inspiration behind forming a band." I told him, the interview was turning out to be long and winded, with mostly in-jokes between Pablo, Alex, Adi and PC, the four guys who had come to meet me.
"I had always wanted to be the lead singer of a rock band, you know," He said, "Ever since I was like ten years old and saw Axl Rose jump into the crowd in a concert video."
I laughed, and then saw the serious expression on his face, "Oh..ahem, you are serious. Well, pretty good, pretty good, I mean that is a good starting point, trying to emulate a Guns and Roses music video."
"It was a concert video." He corrected me, and perhaps my laughter had put him off a bit. I decided to turn my attention to Alex. "So Alex, did you too see Slash do some trick on TV and decided you want to be a guitarist?"
Alex smiled shyly and said, "I am still learning, we do have a long way to go, and I dont know, one day these guys asked me if I could play for them...and we played a Green Day song..."
"Let me tell you in detail," PC cut-in, he hadn't got a word in edge wise till now, and when he did he didn't stop, he kept on speaking, interjecting his sentences with 'obviously' (I counted by drawing sticks on my note pad, he said obviously forty two times) and he had a habit of running his hands through his hair, he took a water break too, to go and 'water' his hair. In the meantime Alex was tuning his guitar, Adi was looking far away at some object in the distance and Pablo was scowling at PC.

"Right, so where were we?" Pablo said, almost sarcastically when PC finished his monologue, "You see it was PC's idea, and something that I really didn't contest at that time to have the best guitarist of our College year in the band, add to that two or three enthusiasts who wanted to learn drums, and The Best Keyboard player of the College year we had eight or nine people in the band."
"My God, you could cover Slipknot and stuff..."
"We don't like Slipknot!" Alex said.
"I do..." Pablo said, "Well, at least some songs, I mean 'Before I forget is kind of cool."
"Will we be covering Slipknot?" Adi asked Pablo.
"No, we won't." Alex said "Remember, we don't like Slipknot."
"Before I Forget..."
"Look the question is not Slipknot it is..." I tried to say something.
"Obviously you may think that a nine piece band would be able to cover Slipknot, and obviously we can't cover it because..."

They were a bit incoherent after that, the rest of the interview was like a bad comedy film. From the jottings I made on the notepad, I tried to form a tale of the band."

The band and it's name were products of whimsical fancies of the core band members (Alex, Adi, PC, Pablo). PC thought it prudent to have the best guitarist of the College Year and The Best Keyboard member of the College year as members of the band. He also enlisted two or three drum enthusiasts from his circle of friends.

The story goes on that the Best Keyboard Player of the College Year didn't quite know that he was in the band, and thus never turned up at practices, nor learned any of the songs that the band wanted to do. The Best Guitarist didn't really like rock music, and so turned up at practices but stayed as a silent spectator (a very nice guy, they emphasised), and the two or three drum enthusiasts were just that, 'enthusiasts'.

(Much later, Pablo told me that his band was a lot like Spinal Tap, with a list of temporary drummers, until Nandit came in to the picture).

And so by the end of the first year of their existence the band's strength was cut down to Four from Eight to Nine.