I will be performing at Rabindra Sarobar at sundown on Sunday evening (February 21), the first time at this special 192-acre venue in decades.
The performance - for Anything for Kolkata - will essentially celebrate our great city and its people. I will be joined by the popular young band Fakira who will also perform that evening at the Sarobar.
The performance will be special for me for a number of reasons.
One, the cause itself. Over the last few months, just a handful of Calcutta citizens have entered into a collaborative partnership with the government (Calcutta Improvement Trust) to kick-start a musical property called Live in Lakes. The government provides the property free; the citizens organise events with their resources. The objective of this movement is to draw people out of their homes and into parks and gardens.
When I first heard of this, what appealed was that the event had been conducted each weekend across five months for the public at large - no tickets, no sponsor and open-to-all. All one has to do is turn up, sprawl on the grass, drink 'lebu cha' and soak in the music. These citizens - Avik Saha and Mudar Patherya - have done so, I am told, by crowd-funding their events, passing the hat around among friends, clients and relatives. What has been remarkably proved is that the city has a number of generous anonymous souls willing to put their cash down to fund something they don't even get their name on! Over the months, the proceeds have been deployed to host performances across diverse musical genres benefiting city and rural performers.
How then could I say no?
Two, a live open-air environment gives me a bigger high any day than performing in a box. I have performed at Gunnersbury Park in London, open-air gigs adjacent to New York's Central Park as well as stadia in Durban, Cape Town, Nairobi and Russia. Each time it was heaven to be engaged in an instant connect with thousands.
Three, Calcutta is perhaps the only city that continues to be creatively adaptive when it comes to reinventing its public spaces. What is a busy traffic intersection during the day is magically transformed into a hallowed auditorium at night (the nearest neighbour's home doubling as the 'green room'). To perform at the Sarobar is to see how a morning walkers' paradise is transformed into a relaxing waterside amphitheatre by dusk.
Four, whatever India does on a normal scale, we manage to magnify! When one performs to a Mumbai audience, they say 'good crowd' when you have 300 turning up for a corporate show in a five-star hotel. I have performed in Chinsurah with 100,000 swaying to the music (almost 50 per cent higher than what Eden Gardens can hold today); I have been in front of 50,000 in Madhyamgram. To go to the Sarobar then is to go for the sheer adrenalin of performing in the open before thousands.
Five, it would be easy to curse the darkness; it is challenging to light a candle. When the organisers presented their budget for my event ('meagre' in their words) it became a duty to shift from my perch, waive my professional fee, pitch in with personal resources (to pay the sound man) and join their brave movement.
And that is the message I have for all Calcuttans. We live in a remarkable city. We take pride in our sense of community.
Let us come forward with whatever we can to contribute - a musician like me can sing, someone can paint, yet another can link givers to help the distressed, and there is someone who can collect funds and make the show go on.
Now you may ask me, if I am going to perform free at Rabindra Sarobar on Sunday, pray what's in it for me?
YOU. Simply.
