Author Archives: Drashti Thakkar

Pictures by Abhishek Gunaratnam He sits at the head of the table, his countenance calm and assertive, but mainly occupied. He is engrossed in conversation with two men. When we come in, he holds a look of slight annoyance, a look that says he has forgotten about the interview. The two men take leave at his permission and he walks towards the couch and asks us to take a seat “What will you have? Tea? Coffee?” He signals the house-help to get something and turns to us. His attitude seems to be that of a man humouring a child. He says to me “So where do you want to start?” The question sounds like a…

“I’m astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will’s surrender. I begin because I don’t have the strength to think; I finish because I don’t have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.” –  The Book of Disquiet , Fernando Pessoa Anyone who has read Pessoa will have enjoyed the pleasure of indulgence, of reading a work that speaks to one so profoundly and consoles them of all their inactivity in life by…

A full nightclub on a weekday is a rare sight, except perhaps on the occasional public holiday. But at Blue Frog, The Scene gigs do the trick. The Scene is an initiative by NH7 and Blue Frog for a series of gigs “that showcase emerging acts from around the country”. The first edition featured acts like Mumbai punk band The Lightyears Explode , Chennai alt-rockers Skrat and Pune electronica producer Big City Harmonics. The second edition of this series featured alternative rock band Drawing Short Straws, Ambient/progressive metal band Pangea and psychedelic rock band The Circus. Drawing Short Straws is the brainchild of Pune based musicians Sunai Marathe (guitars, vocals, keys) and Shreyas Iyengar (drums, vocals, samples), with Siddharth Gupta on live bass duties. This was…

Sahil Makhija once told me “Mumbai is such a fast moving, vibrant city; it has a sort of rhythmic force. I think that’s why we tend to have more metal from sub genres like power groove.” While power groove had pretty much nothing to do with the extreme metal night at The Blue Frog last week, the city did. The Blue Frog has always seemed to me as a sort of a cocoon that nurtures an alternative universe – a different kind of universe every time. On the 19th of May if you entered The Blue Frog, it would remind you of a James Herbert book – the venue looked dark and forlorn, adding to…

On the 15th of May, somewhere in Mumbai a bunch of doctors successfully performed a rare heart operation, construction work came to halt, and Mahesh Bhatt noticed that Sanjay Dutt had been crying. Away from all of this, within the stylistic confines of The Blue Frog, a hundred or so people grooved as if in a trance. Mumbai based band, Tough on Tobacco had transported its audience from the usual laptrap of the city, into the world of funk, reggae, rock and eccentricity. The band was launching their second album Big Big Joke with a gig at the Frog that night and they started off their set with ‘College of Life’. The catchy intro on rhythm proved to be…