Lounge
Would you risk your life to attend a concert?
Summary
Infrastructure in India hasn’t kept pace with its cultural explosion. Maybe we need to get creative about the ways in which we consume culture
A little more than a year ago, I had written about the debacle that was the Trevor Noah show in Bengaluru—if you can call a show a show if it never happened. The venue failed a basic sound check after the audience had been seated and the barely audible opening act had been performed. As I had written at the time, there were failures at multiple levels that led to this embarrassing moment for everyone concerned—from the organisers to Noah’s team to the owners of the “auditorium" (in reality a trade show venue).
The culture scene in India is exploding, and this is great news. As Avantika Bhuyan pointed out in Lounge a few weeks ago, the latter months of the year are so packed with cultural events in every major city that you would need an algorithm to figure out what to attend and how, short of teleportation, cloning or time travel. “Never before has the life of a culture enthusiast been this hectic. It seems to be raining down concerts, festivals and exhibitions, some of which are taking place on overlapping dates," Avantika wrote. And yet, do we have the physical means to support this cultural explosion?
Sadly, no. At a concert in Chandigarh on 14 December, part of his Dil-Luminati tour, Diljit Dosanjh spoke about poor concert infrastructure in India and said he would not perform live here till the situation improved (he later retracted the statement). The singer reportedly complained about the setting of the stage, which made it difficult for him to interact with many sections of the audience. In fact, the venue had already run into trouble: the Punjab and Haryana high court directed the administration to take penal action against the organisers if the noise level crossed 75 decibels while responding to a PIL filed by residents.
Bizarrely, 100 mobile phones were reported stolen during the show.
Then, of course, there’s Allu Arjun, the Telugu superstar who was arrested last week in connection with the death of a woman in a stampede during the premiere screening of his film Pushpa 2: The Rule. The owners of the theatre were only issued a show cause notice for a reported 11 lapses.
It’s difficult to see how an actor could be more culpable for a severe infrastructure breakdown and lack of safety measures at a public venue than the people who run the venue, but maybe he could have been less popular? Clearly that’s on him.
No one pays attention to cultural infrastructure in India because our city administrations are still stuck in the roti-kapda-makaan mentality. When people’s basic needs are not met—clean water, clean air, clean roads—culture seems like an indulgence, perhaps; easy to overlook and de-prioritise. And yet, culture doesn’t stop for the rest to play catch up, especially in the hyper-connected world we live in. It takes on a life of its own and thrives despite poorly run venues, lack of common-sense measures like crowd control, and the absence of political and corporate will to create new infrastructure.
I watched an Instagram reel recently by content creator Anushka (@anushcache), who posts on internet and pop culture in India, about several Insta accounts that are selling fake concert videos to people to “flex on their social media feeds." This is how it works—you DM the account, pay them a measly ₹99, and get tagged in “cool insta stories" of people who actually attended the concert, which you can then reshare. You get to brag about it on your socials and these folks get paid. Respect the hustle.
And maybe this is what we will end up doing in future—it certainly seems like a saner and safer way of “attending" a concert or comedy act than actually risking your life to go to one.
Also read: Zakir Hussain (1951-2024): Who will teach the tablas to laugh again?
