DJ Comet aka Santosh Parkar, is one of the city's busiest DJs.
DJ Comet aka Santosh Parkar, is one of the city’s busiest DJs. His visiting card reads, ‘Specialist DJ for festivals, party conferences, politician’s birthdays, any type occasion” And so DJ Comet comes alive at festival times perched atop trucks laden with beautiful statues of various Gods as they pass through the streets of Mumbai — also stacked on this truck are his four life size speakers, a mixer and sound console. DJ Comet, dressed like a cross between Jay Z and Mithun Chakravarty in DISCO DANCER, expertly spins a curious mix of bhajans and Bollywood tracks.
He proudly tells me, “Apart from my jadoogiri at festival time, I am also favourite DJ of all political parties — whenever they have celebrations, whether it is MLA election victories or their children’s birthday parties, I am first choice.”
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“That’s all very well, Santosh Parkar, but with these huge speakers, this raucous music being played at such a volume, do you not care about the noise pollution that you are creating ? Do you think the gods would have appreciated all this unnecessarily loud tamasha. Do you not care about the effect this is having on us ordinary citizens ? Where are your manners, your civic sense, do you not care for your fellow man?
Illustration/ Amit Bandre
DJ Comet looked at me as if I was talking Swahili. “Sir, what kind of dumb fool questions are these, why are you accusing only me of civic selfishness and increasing noise levels. Mumbai city has become Anarchy City. Anything goes, no one gives three hoots. Nowadays any festival that happens, there is loud dhamaka way beyond the 11 pm deadline, do they care if they’re inconveniencing anyone. And why only festivals, what about daily life. As a city we have lost all sense of manners, all morals, all ethics. What I do is only on select occasions. What about what we are doing to each other day after day.
We have forgotten basic manners - we step out of a lift to let someone through, have you ever been thanked. ‘Please, thank you, excuse me, beg your pardon’ have vanished from our vocabulary. Someone bumps into you, when did you last hear a ‘sorry”. Take road manners - Do we give the indicator when turning right at a traffic signal. We just stop in the middle of the road, as if it’s our right. We blow our horns, even in ‘Silence Zones’ outside hospitals, overtake from the wrong side, drive down one way streets. We jump queues, we let our phones ring in theatres and cinemas. We let our children run around screaming in restaurants.”
He paused for breath.u00a0“Sir I must leave, I have three gigs to DJ tonight. Amar Singh’s party for ENGLISH VINGLISH success, the celebration for Suresh Kalmadi’s power in the IOA, the venue is next to an old age home. And abhi abhi a ladies group has asked me to play songs from movie BIWI NO. 1 outside Sriprakash Jaiswal’s house.
Rahul da Cunha is an adman, u00a0theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahuldacunha62 @gmail.com u00a0
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.u00a0
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