Lindsay Pereira: Can you Beliebe this lip service?

Justin Bieber performing at DYu00e2u0080u0088Patil stadium earlier this month File picI didnt attend the Justin Bieber concert for a number of reasons This has nothing to do with the fact that I have good taste or that I dont understand why what he does outside a studio tends to get more attention than what he records inside or that I have wanted to lock him in a room with a good book ever since I heard one of his hits called Bigger which includes these lines Put your tooth under your pillowcase No I wont I wont ever ever let you down Like a seesaw lets you down you know why Cause we aint on the playground no more babyI didnt attend the concert because its almost impossible for anyone interested at a cultural event to appreciate it when its organised in Bombay None of the events I have attended in our city have ever been satisfyingThis has nothing to do with the acts on stage of course because they have often been magical Its what happens offstage that has always left me with a bad taste in my mouthWhen Michael Jackson performed here in the 1990s for instance there were lines that went around Andheri Sports Complex disrupting traffic for hours When Deep Purple played at the Brabourne stadium the barricades set up inside were broken soon after the music began and people with cheaper tickets shoved those who had paid more out of the way because shoving comes as naturally to us as spitting on the streetsUntil the Internet appeared and we were granted the possibility of booking tickets online and on smart phones queues regularly resembled lines at the bank with people waiting for hours in the sun completely unsure of whether or not they would eventually get a ticket at the end of that waitThings havent changed despite the fact that a number of people who organise concerts now are experienced hands people who attend Glastonbury and Burning Man before trying to replicate the success of those exhilarating events here Some of them get it right until they are let down by a government that neither has the will nor the vision to support them Others are forced to shut down because corruption makes it impossible for them to earn anything remotely proportionate to the amount of effort put inJustin Bieber performed I use the term loosely of course at DY Patil Stadium a venue that isnt known for its proximity to anything anywhere in Bombay Approximately 40000 people turned up apparently because thats how starved for entertainment we are in our country of a billion people A lot of these guests paid a large sum of money begged borrowed or stole some then flew in from all corners in order to watch this young man sing things like Chillin by the fire while we eatin fondue I dont know about me but I know about you Some of these 40000 people presumably got what they wanted What a lot of them didnt get despite the arm and leg they had auctioned in order to afford a ticket was stuff like dustbins toilets and drinking waterAccording to media reports there were no dustbins inside or outside the venue This can happen only in a place that treats all its surroundings as dump yards and where organisers know they dont have to care because we have a government that routinely ignores things like cleanliness with impunity The toilets were supposedly filthy which shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone who has ever dared to enter any public toilet in what our government refers to as Indias financial capitalAs for drinking water people had to shell out as much as Rs 150 per bottle Because why regulate prices when you can steal under the guise of running a business operation Its how movie theatres airports and malls get away with deciding what to charge too thumbing their collective noses at the Maximum Retail PriceThose who stayed until the end had to deal with the nightmare of clogged roads and utterly unmanageable traffic another routine problem that exists because no one cares what happens after costs are recovered We are all treated like cattle and not with the murderous respect now shown to those bovine animalsI am told Justin Bieber spent more time lipsyncing than singing I cant blame him He must have realised what event managers and our ministries of culture have long accepted as the norm The audience doesnt matterWhen he isnt ranting about all things Mumbai Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet He tweets lindsaypereira Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom