Season Finale

Left. Right. Left. Up. Down. Lower.

The butt in front of Rajat's face was hugged by a fine, black specimen of sartorial excellence. What had started as a round of dignified stares and curt gestures into platoons of brass and wood had now reached a fever pitch that apparently required ball-of-the-sole jumping and butt-flailing. A slower melody was emerging, thankfully.

Rajat's eyes flitted to the blonde on the left. She looked doleful with her eyes closed. Engrossed. Asleep? No. She was fiddling. The violin looked so precious in her hands, just the right size. Under her chin, near her nape...

Focus.

He immediately regretted the decision as the plump bums accelerated into a slow rise along an expanding crescendo. An instinctive jerk of his eyes to the heavens above and he was occupied. The chamber was huge. It must have sat over two thousand people (all busy admiring the well-dressed buttock of who was supposedly a champion conductor). The ceiling faced him with what looked like acrylic sheets larger than cars, thicker than engineering textbooks, tilted into reflecting the right sounds the right way. They hung on nothing but floor-high ropes.

Sheer awe.

Rajat's reluctance to attend the orchestra was understandable. He had been raised on a steady diet of Sonu Nigam, Backstreet Boys and Shakira. Classy music to him meant Nordic bands whose names had declensions not found in the English language. He strongly believed that Western classical music was supposed to stay inside elevators, car-reversing systems and the party scenes in a Hollywood movie before a heist. However, his brother had successfully bullied him into attending the "Season Finale" with a lecture on 'expanding your musical sensitivies'. It all stunk of a Pyramid Scheme to Rajat, who was convinced that his frugality was the last defense against the genius of marketing (unsurprisingly, his brother refused to divulge how much his front row seat had costed). His brother's tastes were curious because he had been raised on the exact same staple of mainstream music (unless he had snuck out and 'cultured' himself in secret, which, frankly, sounded appropriately sneaky as far as younger brothers go).

What is a Season Finale any way? Didn't we evolve out of celebrating the end of Autumn a few hundred years ago?

The conductor had settled for what could only be described as needling an imaginary balloon right in front of his nose with that stick-thingy. And then the piece ended suddenly. There were three seconds of silence. Nobody seemed sure whether to clap or not. And then it broke like a river. A thoroughly underwhelming river. However, Rajat clapped enthusiastically, always more generous with appreciation than the more costly resource of attention.

---

He moved out into the lobby with the shuffling crowd where, for the first time he realized, people donned attires two notches above whatever he had put on. Thick rimmed glasses, full-sleeved cottons, etched belt leathers -- the whole shebang. A few coat-racks were even sporting humans, presumably practicing for Oscar ceremonies. Rajat's neck threatened to grow stiff with the effort to not look down at himself. He had missed the discrepancy on his way in, having been distracted by the innocuously labelled "Program Notes" in the foyer. A surreptitiously placed placard had revealed a cost of two hundred rupees. Betrayals everywhere.

The tea-counter seemed empty, just then. With a heaviness that comes from anticipating a lighter wallet, he spoke, in his best attempt to sound 'cultured'.

"Excuse me, a cup of tea, please?"

"Sure, sir. Twenty rupees."

Not bad.

Rajat accepted the ceramic cup and saucer with mild exasperation at the vain attempt at civilization and placed a relaxed elbow on the counter, sipping slowly and deliberately.

The décor was very well done. Plush carpets, stone-bricked walls and an unfrayed candlelight glow over an impossibly large area. The tea was excellent. Rajat decided it was a little underpriced, if anything. There was something endearing about the peace that hung over him in that moment. Tea made everything better. It stirred his soul into awakening. Tea was divine, he declared with great authority, to nobody in particular. He resolved to use his new-found constitution in better focusing upon the orchestra and doing his brother (and the costly ticket) justice.

As he retreated back to the auditorium, a volunteer found him.

"Sir, a moment, please?"

"What's up?"

"Would you take a moment to answer a few questions?"

Rajat had spent the four seconds since having found this twenty-something college student in studying the piece of paper in his hand. Sure enough, there it was: 'Phone Number' and 'Email ID'.

"Do you plan to spam me?", he chirped with what was meant to be a disarming smile but looked like you had asked Rumpelstiltskin for the first born.

The boy, who had until then been the literal embodiment of everything a nervous wreck should be, squared his shoulders and suddenly piped, "Not at all! We send you just one email and then if you like, we can send you more."

Sweet kid. "Here, give me that. I think I might fill it faster myself."

"You're really warm, do you know that? Some people here are really rude. It is my first day...that is why I am nervous..."

Yes, you're right, I am quite warm. "Not at all! People just get skittish around surveys, you know. Here you go, let me know if you need anything else. You're doing just fine. The break seems to have ended though, catch you later?"

"Yes, thank you very much, enjoy the night!"

Rajat left the volunteer in remarkably higher spirits. Walking away with a slower gait, he contemplated upon the vivacity of human emotion. There had been something fundamental about this interaction. Every one of us is at the end of the day, he thought, moved by the same family of emotions. Perhaps true achievement of the human potential comes from identifying what drives us to be and how we can best effect change in our brothers and sisters with this awesome power...

---

The butt wasn't moving yet. Rajat was idly wondering how strong the man's gluteus maximus muscles must be when the music started with a distant hum. It grew into a gurgle of notes only to scatter into islands of instruments building on subsequent variations, all staggered relative to each other, creating all-in-all an overwhelming tension that begged for a resolution slow in coming.

Rajat was completely focused on the performance.

For example, he noted that the extreme right of the stage housed what looked like violins that had forgotten to stop growing. They were being hugged and touched in ways that would have made Rajat blush if not for the thorough education afforded by the 21st century Internet...

Focus.

Far behind, on the highest tier of the stage, a pale man in a two-piece suit held a single silver triangle with a seriousness that seemed woefully out of place to Rajat's tea-fuelled examination. Every few minutes he would strike an equally silver rod against the sides of the equilateral triangle, to his credit, with practiced haste. And that was that.

People get paid to do this?

They were now playing something that seemed to grow as if from behind a rock. He felt it progress around him with the sincerity of a rattlesnake.

Hey! Did I just do musical appreciation?

"No.", said a disembodied voice.

I thought that was pretty poetic.

"No, you did not."

Okay, but I found the whole effect quite wholesome.

"Please. Stop embarrassing yourself."

He had the distinct feeling that the speaker, had he a corporeal form, would wear a monocle and an unkind moustache which would be trimmed at fixed intervals with designer gold clippers. For an entity inside my head, Rajat thought, you are quite extravagant.

They hadn't played the Beethoven that succeeds 'Please hold the line. Your call is valuable to us.' Rajat had a feeling the performance really wasn't complete without those few notes. He instinctively looked around as if the sheer force of his thoughts could solicit fellow patrons and call this out for the hoax it was! To make it worse, the musicians kept sneaking peeks at the conductor's wand every few minutes. They really should have come prepared. What was the conductor's job anyway? Weren't these pieces tightly wound with timescales, bars and staves? The small pumpkins were in a frenzy again. This guy loved his job, Rajat noted with a happy smile.

Just as his attention floated to the eye of a video camera recording the stage from behind the flutists, the piece ended with a finality. Claps resounded and a few shouts of 'Bravo!' rose from behind. Rajat fought the urge to raise an eyebrow into a geosynchronous orbit. Slowly, figures rose around him. There was a stubbornness to the remaining mass but the gesture gained momentum and within ten seconds, only the most elderly were seated, ostensibly due to their arthritis and other exculpating handicaps. It fascinated Rajat how the motive of a hive could emerge from its individuals and grip every constituent member into action; Rajat fought hard to resist it in himself! Truly there was something religious in the way the sum could be greater than its parts, in the power of non-verbal communication to rouse fellow men to the pursuit of goals arising from the deep oceans where the self slept and stared at itself in pools of memory long since forgotten.

It almost made Rajat want to stand up and clap.