the broken tooth: band through my eyes

Long Live Broken Tooth

It was a Friday evening. Or perhaps a Saturday. I don't quite remember.

What I do remember is that I was the only one in the hostel who had a CD player back then.

It was our first year of college, those formative days of early maturity—or, more accurately, glorious immaturity—when life was a curious mixture of misplaced confidence, boundless enthusiasm, and absolutely no sense of direction.

One evening, a rather large fellow, whom I regularly subjected to my unsolicited ridicule, walked into my room clutching a CD.

He wanted me to play it.

It contained a few Linkin Park songs. I had heard some of them before, but little did I know that those songs would soon unleash a hysteria of sorts.

The fellow was Pablo.

And I was Pushpendra, the proud owner of one of the first computers in our little circle, boasting a magnificent 80 GB hard drive, destined to accommodate an ever-expanding collection of songs.

Sorry, not songs.

Rock.

And that was how it all began.

Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, and Pink Floyd were already familiar territory for me. But Ozzy Osbourne, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, and, yes, Lostprophets were relatively new discoveries.

Lostprophets, in particular, would soon become something of an inspiration for us.

Somewhere amid the endless listening sessions, heated discussions, and the occasional pretence of intellectual superiority that invariably accompanies the discovery of rock music, an idea began taking shape.

We should form a band.

And why the hell not?

Pablo, for one, had already imagined several names. Marie Celeste, The Wicked Witch, and a host of other possibilities that sounded sufficiently mysterious, rebellious, and, most importantly, cool.

The music that had once seemed almost alien to everyone except Pablo and me was now spreading through our batch like wildfire.

Rock had found its way into hostel rooms, corridors, late-night conversations, and the collective consciousness of a generation discovering its musical identity.

And IT-BHU, after all, had a rich history and culture of rock bands.

The idea was there.

The enthusiasm was there.

And so were the men.

Adarsh was around, as always, an extraordinary combination of boundless energy and monumental laziness. There were a few others too, although they weren't seriously part of the plan at that stage.

There was, however, one minor inconvenience.

Apart from Pablo, who could sing, the rest of us possessed little more than an abundance of enthusiasm and an almost complete absence of musical ability.

But then, since when had a lack of ability ever stopped a bunch of first-year engineering students from dreaming?

It wasn't until the end of our first year that we finally ventured to KP to learn something about music.

I had chosen the drums.

That was my first visit.

It also happened to be my last.

The academic year drew to a close, examinations duly screwed us over, and the summer holidays arrived with their customary promise of unrestrained fun.

And fun we had.

But the band had quietly slipped into the background.

Then came the next semester, and with it, the inevitable fakka.

By then, I had more or less abandoned my ambitions of becoming a drummer. I decided to devote my attention to football, something at which I had always fancied myself considerably more competent.

As far as I was concerned, the dream of the band was in serious distress.

Perhaps even beyond redemption.

But dreams have a peculiar way of surviving the people who first dream them.

There was PC.

There was Alex.

There was Chhotu.

And, of course, there was Pablo.

Somehow, through all the changes, false starts, abandoned ambitions, and shifting loyalties, the band survived.

More than survived.

It became something real.

It might no longer have been called Marie Celeste, The Wicked Witch, or any of those wonderfully pretentious names we had once contemplated.

But then, what significance does a name really have when weighed against the sentiments, memories, and friendships that gave birth to it?

It was our dream band.

And it remains our dream band.

To watch those guys perform on stage would mean no less to me than standing there myself, drumsticks in hand, playing alongside them.

Because somewhere in those early days, between Pablo's CD, my 80 GB hard drive, the countless hours of rock music, and our utterly improbable ambitions, I had become a part of something.

Something that went beyond music.

I was there when it was merely an idea.

I was there when it was a dream.

And even though I never quite became the drummer I had imagined myself to be, I never really left the band.

They sometimes call me the band manager.

Occasionally, they even call me a groupie.

I don't particularly mind.

After all, titles are rather insignificant things.

What matters is that I was a part of the band.

I still am.

And in some strange, sentimental corner of my heart, I always will be.

Long live Broken Tooth.