Total Siyapaa. Neha Sharma
“I mean, we didn’t sit down and say all right this year let’s have a record number of artistes from this region of the world,” he continued as they navigated a beautiful corridor with mosaic murals on either side. “We wanted great music on display at the festival and we went about assembling a set that did just that.”
Jeff asked them to hold off on the conversation as he took a few quick shots of the passage way, the artwork, and the building interiors. These would be filler shots, barely a second or two long in the final product, but they would give that touch of authenticity to the story.
While Jeff was busy, Duncan made small talk, sharing ghost stories (“Come on, Aasha, every half-decent cultural festival in this part of the world has a resident haunting they are proud of; we do too!”) and his cigarettes with Aasha. He also extended an invitation for evening drinks at his favourite pub. “You’ll get to meet some of the other artistes there as well. It’s a great environment.”
When Jeff was done, he turned his attention back to Duncan and they resumed from where they had stopped.
“If people still want an answer to why we have a large concentration to artistes with roots in the Subcontinent this year,” he continued once they resumed the walk, “Well, we offer two options for that: it’s a coincidence or it’s an indication of a rich musical history. Personally, I believe it to be a bit of both.”
As they got closer to the Hub, where The Crashing Waves Collective were to perform later that day, their time together was drawing to an end. Aasha took the opportunity to ask Duncan one last question; it was a question she would repeat a number of times over the next few days, “Duncan, if there’s one South Asian artiste here you’d recommend, if there had to be just the one, who would it be?”
“Just one?” he asked, his darker eyebrows bunching up and hiding in his blond curls. She could see him thinking, the names churning around in his head, one after the other. And just when she thought he was going to back off from the challenge, his expression changed.
“We have some exceptional talent at display here. But if you put a gun to my head, there is this one guy – Aman Ali,” he pulled up a profile of a good-looking young guy on his tablet. “The kid’s from London, but originally from the Subcontinent. He is doing very interesting things with his music; I’d recommend him.”
Aman took a deep breath before he flashed his trademark boyish smile at the audience, all of whom were on their feet, applauding. Over the last eight months, Aman had received a fair amount of adulation, but this was a slightly different scale. This was overwhelming.
He clutched his guitar with his left hand, holding it suspended, slightly above the floor, as he thanked the accompanying musicians on the stage with him. As they took a bow, he did too. He then held out his right hand and waved to the crowd. This single glorious moment alone, he realized, made up for the colossal stress-ball of a year he had waded through to get here.
“Thank you!” he called out. His voice was surprisingly steady despite the flurry of emotions coursing through him. He was filled with a surge of hope and confidence; but there was also a hint of relief twirled around it. Music had always been a part of him, now he could be a part of music too.
His story was meant to have a very different ending. Aman had been on the fast-track before he deviated from the plan – one that involved a new Masters degree and a shiny corporate job. It was understood that he’d spend the next two years climbing the corporate ladder, establishing himself in the industry, and once he did, his parents would find him a wonderful Pakistani bride to settle down with. This would be followed with the social standard of two kids, fancy car and big house – a fairly acceptable happily ever after, if there ever was one. His parents were of a liberal tilt, of course. There would be no village girl for their Aman. No, they would find him a lovely foreign-educated Pakistani girl – a lovely foreign-educated Punjabi Pakistani girl. After all, Aman deserved the best.
The Ali family had relocated from Lahore to Vancouver when Aman was eight years old. They left their old crumbling family home, one they shared with a large extended family, to start over on the other side of the world.
In Lahore, Ashraf Ali was a bank clerk. It was a good, respectable job, but it wasn’t enough to sustain his brood of eight.
“Come to Canada. There are many options; the kids will have opportunities to do anything they like. What will you do in Pakistan? It will take you another ten-fifteen years to get to a good post. And till then?” his second cousin Abdul had said to him during one of his visits home. “I’ll help you with the papers, aap sirf haan bolo.”
It hadn’t been an easy decision to make, and it hadn’t been an easy move to make. The cold, the isolation, the culture, had jolted the family more than they expected. But Aman took on this new life as an adventure. He adapted to the alien environment with great ease. Even when his parents and older siblings struggled to find an acceptable kebab house, Aman and his younger sister Zara were wolfing down unfamiliar foods like cheeseburgers and hot dogs.
To begin with, both Ashraf and his wife worked in his cousin’s little restaurant – Badshah. Ashraf also did a morning shift at a local petrol pump to supplement the family income. It took four long years but the Ali family finally set up their own ethnic grocery store specializing in Pakistani, Indian, Sri Lankan and West African ingredients.
The store, Ashraf & Sons, was a runaway success. The family now owned a chain, including two across the border in America. The ‘Masala Empire’, as it was dubbed in a feature by The Vancouver Sun a few years ago, was now headed by Aman’s eldest brother.
As their financial situation improved, Ashraf grew adamant that his children study, and study well. His two oldest kids were already getting involved in the store, but he wanted the others to have the opportunity to be doctors or engineers or lawyers.
The day Aman got his acceptance letter from Oxford to study Economics had been a very special day for Ashraf. In fact the whole family had been euphoric. And very Punjabi.
“Beta! Tu ne izzat badha di!”
“Shabash, beta! Shabash! I’m going to call everyone in Pakistan to tell them our Aman is going to England! To Oxford. Allah ka lakh, lakh shukar hai.”
It was exactly the opposite reaction of what he had received eight months ago, after he’d received his Masters degree, and before he’d started on his musical journey. He had held his job offer in one hand as he shared his new plan with the family over an excruciatingly long Skype call.
“I don’t want to work in an MNC. I want to make music. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m taking the year off to see if I can do something with it. If I can’t, I’ll go back to Economics. But I don’t want to go through life without even trying.”
His parents, and his father in particular, had balked at the idea.
“You’ve worked so hard for your degree, why throw it all away, Aman? You could really make something of yourself here. Are you ready to let it all go on a childish whim?” he had argued.
Aman could almost see his father pacing around in that neat living room in Vancouver, trying to find some comfort in the frantic, repetitive action, while his mother tried to calm him down.
“We left Lahore so that you kids could enjoy opportunities we never had,” he had continued, “and now you want to waste it on music? Beta, you have a gift, but it’s not this gaana-bajaana; it’s your brain. The sooner you realize this, the better it will be for all of us.”
“Socho, Aman, who will want to marry a musician? Most of them end up … playing on some dirty street corner, performing for cents. No, Aman, that will not be you. Absolutely not,” his mother had added, her voice wobbling with an endless stream of tears.
Aman had spent the rest of the evening staring at a painting