It Wasn't Delhi This Time

No part of this is going to be remotely close to anything I love and hence qualified for space on this blog. But I remembered in time that Apoorva has booked some space for angry rants in her profile, so I thought I'd just infringe on her precious angry-rant space.

I want an apology from the organisers of the Metallica (non) concert in Gurgaon.

I want another one from retards who jumped on the stage after the concert was announced to be "postponed" and trashed the equipment like nobody's business.

I also want more people to be able to understand causality. To break it down into words of fewer syllables, that breathtaking relationship between cause and effect.

Because I haven't heard anyone from the organising team apologizing for the mismanaged mess that they were trying to pass off as the venue for an international metal concert capable of accommodating some 25,000 fans, I haven't heard of anyone being booked for vandalism after the show, and I've heard quite a few people still labouring under the first few confused media stories about the concert turning into a no-show because of "typical Delhi hooliganism".

For starters, the story, as it happened.

Crowd starts trickling into and around the venue of the concert much before the gates-opening time of 3 PM; looks around for space to park their cars; is pointed to a vast dusty desert in the vicinity of a bright Apollo Circus tent. Lovely. Hopefully the circus guys got some brisk business after 7:00 PM once the said crowd started trickling out dejected and deflated.

Some time after 3 PM, crowd is waiting around for entry into the venue; gets conflicting views on when things would actually start; gets no information whatsoever. Crowd waits patiently; thinks of grabbing some snacks in the meantime; eventually leaves the snacks table alone seeing the crappy fare on offer. Waits some more for Metallica, or the opening bands, or some music, or an announcement about the show – something of any sort. Just to make sure we're on the same page so far – the crowd is waiting patiently so far, no pushing, no shoving, no groping, no pressing. Awesome, almost like we aren't in dreaded Delhi. I kid you not, I saw an extremely genial looking elderly couple in their late 60s sitting cross legged on the ground, patiently waiting to see what all the Metallica fuss was about. Or maybe they were genuinely into heavy metal. Not getting into their motivations for being there, just pointing out that there were all sorts of people there, most of them harmless, every single one of them civil. Not a jungle of "thrash metal brutes" invoking hell and baying for blood, as is probably the stereotypical image in the minds of all those people whose comments I saw earlier today on news websites offering gems like, "This is why we shouldn't have western culture concerts in India!!" and "Stick to Indian cultural programmes and not this filth!!" Not even "ganwar jats" waiting to break into bhangra at the first guitar strum, well, at least not most of the crowd. Alright then.

Getting back to the day when nothing happened, the wait is punctuated with the only announcements we heard till then – instructions to people in front of the stage to take a few steps back. Not surprising, considering that the distance between the crowd and the stage did seem dangerously little, and the height of the stage not being exceptional, it did seem to compromise the security of the band, their equipment, and the people up front. The deal is, how was this not apparent to the security guys before thousands of people started gathering there? One flimsy barricade between the crowd and the stage? Come to think of it, such scant security arrangement in general for a crowd of this size? How could the organising and security teams not have a fucking clue on how to properly secure a crowd of this size, for an event of this magnitude, in a city like Delhi? Right now, there are more than a thousand policemen/security officials stationed at the Bangalore venue. The dimwits obviously picked up some sense because as per reports, the Delhi venue had 300 private security guards and only 50 Haryana policemen. Yes, for a crowd of nearly 30,000.

After that time blurs and the next thing the crowd hears (after a few false starts earlier with people going "yeahhh!" at someone merely adjusting the mic or shifting some equipment) is an announcement to the tune of: “I've a very important announcement to make. Metallica is at the hotel right now holding a press conference with television channels. Due to technical issues, the concert has been postponed till tomorrow." After which the crowd predictably starts booing, and the mic is promptly handed over to an Indian guy who tries to bring more clarity to the situation by loudly repeating, "Kal hoga concert, abhi nahi hoga, kal 4 baje aa jana, abhi jao." By this time, it's clear to most people that "postponed" is just a euphemism for "cancelled", to break it gently to fans.

The saner people trickle out immediately, sensing there may be trouble. The sane but slower ones, or the buzzed and stoned ones, or just generally confused ones hang around for a while but then start beating retreat. The mostly sane but looking-for-a-lost-friend people, such as Big Mughal Emperor and I, head towards an exit slightly later. We didn't miss much, apparently, because when we joined the crowd heading out, the crowd was still confused about which way to turn, because after almost reaching the exit, they were told to "take a U-turn" and walk back because the exit was still barricaded. Why? Because the police had no clue the crowds would be heading out so soon. Bhai, gaane ki toh awaaz hi nahi aayi andar se. And why again? Because the Awesome Organisers With Tremendous Foresight and Amazing Event Management Skills had apparently failed to take the police into the loop that the show was now cancelled. So everyone was heading out only to find the exit gates barricaded, because the police themselves had no idea that the event was cut short and was now over.

Anyone who knows anything about planning events bigger than kiddie birthday parties would know that getting a No Objection Certificate and the tens of requisite clearances & permits that made our great license permit raj the holy terror that it is, is close to impossible at less than a day's notice. More importantly, how do you expect organisers who couldn't organise things well enough with a few months of preparation time, to not only replicate all the event management efforts but also miraculously make it all go right in less than a day, for the concert to be held the next day? The event was cancelled from the time they took the mic and started sugarcoating the news with words like "tomorrow" and "postponed". How do they not add an apologetic note to that?

By the time most people had left the venue, I assume, the retards took over and smashed the stage. Not Metallica's kit equipment, to set the story straight, but equipment no less valuable and definitely equipment they had NO business, rhyme or reason to even touch, let alone ruin and damage. This, once again, is why we sorely need (a) CCTVs installed in public places with big crowds, (b) working CCTVs, mind it, and (c) the procedure of going through CCTV data to single out vandalizing rats and book them for it, dammit.

The lesson about causality comes in here. For all those crying about how "the rowdy Delhi crowd" got the Metallica show cancelled – take note. Some people were rowdy and they behaved like absolute jackasses, but the show was not cancelled because of them. The show got cancelled BEFORE that, because of the grossly inadequate security, poor organisation and hideous event management. The show got cancelled ("postponed", if you still believe in Santa Claus) and then some jackasses got rowdy. There is no excuse and no justification for it, but that is the fucking order in which things happened. They're both equally shitty things to happen but the first was the cause and the second was the effect, and not the other way round, and for anyone I hear telling me that it was the "Delhi crowd" that made Metallica cancel and not the losers calling themselves 'organisers' – may the next concert you're looking forward to get postponed till never, for no fault of yours.