Coldplay concert- An enriching experience!
January started with a bang being busy at work as soon as the month started. December was a forgotten dream and it was really tough to hit the ground running. However, there were moments of bliss and one such experience is what I am going to write about today- The coldplay experience!!! A music concert like no other that warrants a blog post .
I was a bit worried when I received a midnight call from my cousin Hrishi. "Was everything alright??" was my immediate thought and picked up the phone with fear. This feeling quickly turned to happiness when he said “Hey Papu do you want coldplay tickets, only catch is you have to fly to Bombay”. I leapt out of bed and did a merry dance and said yes I will confirm in the morning. My husband who had just returned from the US from a conference trip and was suffering from jet lag remarked “Not me I am not a fan and don’t know their songs but I know you are a certified nut. Take your girlfriends”.
Earlier in the year when bookmyshow opened its portal for tickets 6 of us girls from Bangalore waited and tried on multiple devices and were unlucky like the million other fans who had tried for the tickets in India. I knew I could ask my friend Sona to join in and if not her then one of the six. The other person who was constantly on my mind was our friend Naz who is in Sri Lanka. We knew she would be happy for us but also want to strangle us:)
I could hardly sleep the night as I was so excited. I was going to see coldplay and was working out various logistics in my mind with the kids school, keshav’s cricket, Santosh's work, no nanny drama and my work. At one point I told myself to calm down and went to sleep. The next day I called Sona and she immediately jumped at the idea. As soon as I got the green signal, we immediately booked our tickets for a quick expensive 1.5 day trip to Mumbai and back.
What to wear
The very next thing is what to wear😆 Girls will be girls so various combinations were chosen from rock chick to casual chic, to beachy, to glittery etc. Various video call consultations with younger sister in the U.K. was pursued. Finally, all combinations were scrapped and Sona wore a Denim dress with yellow shirt and I wore a mango shirt and pants. We were ready to roll!
Tickets
We were scheduled to land at 1:30 PM in Bombay and plan to reach venue by 3:30 or 4PM. We had to pick up tickets from Hrishi and Aanchal's pad on the way. This was the only catch. This would delay us in reaching the venue and while we were wondering how to do the ticketing, Sona had a brilliant idea to pick up tickets a day earlier. This way we could directly go from the airport to the concert venue which was DY patil stadium. Sona kindly arranged to have someone from her husband's (Kalyan - a separate post to thank him!!!) office in Bombay to pick up the tickets from Aanchal and Hrishi’s house. This man Mr Bunty was then going to meet us at the airport and handover the tickets the next day.
D Day
After sending off our kids at the school bus, we got ready and left to the airport. At the airport thanks to the premier lounge at Terminal 1, we had a very good brunch. The spread was really good and this felt like a good auspicious start to the concert. We boarded the indigo flight and because of all the active excitement the previous day had a good nap on the flight. Everything was very smooth and we landed in Bombay right on time. Since we hardly had any luggage we visited the facilities and quickly changed into our concert clothes, makeup etc and met Mr. Bunty to get the tickets. After this got into our cab (again arranged by Mr Kalyan) and were on our way to DY Patil stadium!!!
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At the premier lounge! |
Concert
We were pleasantly surprised by how well the ticket checking and smooth transfer of people from the gates into the stadium was. The F&B was also very well managed. This is especially important in a large country like ours where one often hears of stampedes and crowd mismanagement. We reached close to the stage and stayed put there after some mild refreshments. A special shoutout to Aanchal, Hrishi's wife who gave us some good tips to ensure we did all the right things before entering the stadium.
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| Sona and me at DY Patil |
The opening acts started at about 5 PM with the Zimbabwean singer Shone, Palestinian Chilean singer Elyanna and then Jasleen Royal. I have not heard Jasleen much except for one song but she appeared to be very popular with the crowd. Having never experienced her singing before, we thought she was sub-par.
Sona and I had also made some friends in the crowd and it was a bit unfortunate that two people who had asked us to reserve their places when they went to get some beers never returned back. Such was the enthusiasm of the people in front. You snooze; you lose was the mentality.
It was nearing 7:30 and the crowd was getting impatient. This is when we were shown a video of the environmental efforts that coldplay undertake. This was then followed by a quick video of them walking underground. The crowd went wild with applause and screams.
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| Chris being the front man and entertaining the crowd with a Bumrah story! |
The show was then electric and the 20 year old amongst us knew all the words. We were shocked!!! We were expecting people of our vintage but coldplay has crossed generations and captured hearts of many young fans. Every song was accompanied by colourful lighting of our wrist bands and confetti. It really was an out of the world experience. Plus Chris Martin’s talent going from the piano, to the guitar to the flawless singing and to the way he engaged with the crowd was amazing. He really is a genius par excellent. The base guitarist Guy Berryman for songs like scientist, paradise, viva la vida and sky full of stars was amazing. His renditions of the key portions brought tears to my eyes. It reminded me of this video I saw a few months ago about how he was the unsung hero of coldplay. I fully agree.
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| Chris and Guy doing their thing!!! |
For me the 20 year old song "Yellow" brought back memories of PSG tech hostel where I wore out the tape. I remember Hrishi approving of coldplay circa 2000 when I told him about my listening choice. He was always the guru we went to for western music choices, growing up and the circle getting completed with him getting me tickets for the concert.
The song “Adventure of a lifetime” had a few people going mad with the loudest being Sona and me. Here Guy Berryman's genius shone again. We also had experiences where we jumped so much that people pushed us in the front. Finally another song that had the audience weeping was Fix you. One could almost feel there was something happening between Chris and the piano. The gentleness of the playing with the soulful rendition of the song was perfect combination of music touching your soul.
"To video or not to video"
Having secured a place pretty close to the band, there was a lot of FOMO, does one take videos or does one live in the moment? Another issue was that everyone had their phones out which meant, one would also record the phones of the millions trying to get a sound byte. Ahh the Gen alpha vs us old millennials. I took a couple for viewing here but most of the other memories are in my mind and heart instead of on a hard disk or a virtual cloud disk.
End is the beginning!
When the concert ended, there was a realisation that we had spent a good six hours on our feet and let me say we felt like 18 year olds. We are fit yaay! This was a great feeling that both of us were fit. I think one good tip we can give from our experience was staying hydrated!!! This is so important and probably saved us. Our cool moon spectacles in our hand and with hearts full, we set out of the stadium to find our driver. Everyone outside the concert looked happy and generally felt the world was a good place. The extra efforts the coldplay management took to make sure there was no plastic, indeed helped. There was less trash and people followed the rules of returning back most things. We still found some humans throwing their reusable cups in the stadium but it was not too bad. This means even a place like India, it is possible to follow rules with a good amount of publicity and repeated announcements. The night ended with us reaching Sona's cousin's (Renuka aunty) house which was closer to the venue and sleeping like babies with the rhythm ingrained into our souls. Renuka aunty's warm gracious personality was the exact balm we needed after the concert to complete the dream day. She patiently listened to all our stories and we needed that to calm our nerves which were hyper excited!
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| On a high after the gig!:-) |
Returning back to Bangalore
Throughout the whole concert experience everything worked according to the clock. Not even one delay to call out. This was too good to be true and hence we had a very interesting experience on our way back. We had a 10:45 AM flight back to Bangalore and would have arrived home before 1 PM but God had other plans for us. The flight was very good and we were excited to go back home early. However we had to have one little hiccup for a trip to be a memorable one. Just as we were about to land, the plan flew down and then took off again. Huh?? What just happened. We got an announcement on the plane that the conditions were too windy to make a safe landing and they would take another round and come back to land again. Then landing 2 was attempted, going down going down and then up again.
Huh??? WTF!!! The captain said he could not make the landing again and then flew up again. This time saying we could not do a third attempt because there was no fuel but instead they would fly to Tirupathi and come back to Bangalore after refuelling. How did the plane have enough fuel for Tirupati and not enough for a Bangalore landing was something we could not understand. When I came back home, my husband(Professor of aerospace engineering at IISC bangalore) and his friend, Susheel (Incidentally a scientist as ISRO) were home. I asked the two aero guys, was this even possible? They seem to agree that very strong tail winds could hamper a touch down but perhaps something else was going on. Perhaps there was not enough fuel which could be the real story. Anyway it's now added to one more of my plane stories. You never understand how tricky flying can be when you have a smooth flight. On second thoughts and some introspection perhaps this was a way for God to make us touch down in Tirupathi for some thanksgiving after a superb experience. All in all a fabulous trip and one for the memory books!!!
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