Under the full moon – Bhoomi Jathre 2005

Under the full moon, originally uploaded by anitabora.

Under a full moon night, on Kanakpura Road, we were treated to a melange of music and dance – from Hindustani classical, to rock to death metal – everything was on the menu!

The dusk to dawn music concert, Bhoomi Jathre, was held at the Fireflies Ashram, about 20 kilometres from the city on Saturday evening.

We almost didn’t get there. In fact, we were possibly headed towards Tamil Nadu according to one of our vehicle’s occupants. Our navigator, who I shall call VD, nearly missed the non-descript turn to the ashram on Kanakpura Road.

VI, who was driving his brand new sunshine car, finally gave his vehicle some real exercise as we bumped over the bad village roads. Actually, in some places there were no roads and VI went ouch, ouch as if he was physically hurt. The poor thing – new cars do strange things to people.

We reached much after dusk, around 10.30 pm. The line-up included violinists Mysore Nagaraj & Mysore Manjunath, a Yakshagana troupe from Udipi (which we missed) , Shiri Dance Company and G. Ravi Kiran, a Carnatic vocalist. Then there was Konarak Reddy, Roberto Narain (who gave a rather impressive solo drum performance) and Vasundhara Das who joined in for their last number.

The stage was set under a beautiful peepal (or banyan?) tree – quite appropriate as the theme for this year’s Jathre was the Tree God. The stalls around the venue kept us nourished through the night. The momos ran out quickly and we had to resort to other goodies like kebabs and cake.

Bumped into quite a few people including Rocky and Pallavi who were there with their biker gang. Jace apparently was up there near the stage clicking pictures, but I didn’t catch sight of him.

It was a rather beautiful night. The mosquitoes descended upon us with vengeance, but we smart people had gone prepared with mosquito coils and chaddars. Sleeping bags, pillows and cushions are however recommended, since the stone steps do tend to affect all your body parts after prolonged exposure.

We managed to stay awake till 5.00 in the morning.

At about that time, a band called Myndsnare came onto stage. I had no idea what we were in for. Suddenly, the lead vocalist screamed into the mike and such sounds emanated from him, that I swear, I have not been able to sleep ever since. He was amazing, I think I actually watched open mouthed for a while, completely entranced at his performance.

Not having had much exposure to death metal I realised why they call it death metal 🙂 I wonder if the fella’s parents get any sleep at home. In no time, the three member band (including a woman who drummed as furiously as aforementioned death metal singer sang) managed to wake up everyone including the ones who had settled in comfortably for the night.

Myndsnare had done their job. There was another band that was to follow – called Yell-o. But the name itself sounded slightly scary so at about 5.30 am we decided to call it a night (or a morning, to be more exact!).