Rosalyn D'Mello: An encounter and an epiphany

The author performs with musician Jose Neil Gomes PicSharon IraniI surprised myself during my weeklong Mumbai interlude by making it to Andheri over three consecutive days Way back when I used to work at a renowned citybased fortnightly magazine I remember one of the cover stories we worked on was called The Republic of Andheri because that suburb always felt a little bit cut out from the rest of Mumbai and the world thanks to the infamous traffic that separates it from the known universeIt was like a ghetto if you lived there you never quite left if you didnt live there you never quite visited I live in Kurla and even though technically Andheri particularly Andheri East is only a couple of kilometres away the traffic can make it seem like its in another time zoneIts the metro really that has bridged the actual and notional distance between my neck of the woods and Andheri I was shocked that it took me just 20 minutes to get between Ghatkopar and Versova the other evening when I was going to listen to what turned out to be an amazing Africainspired band Boombay Djembe FolasI left my house at 820 pm got a cab to the metro station and by 905 pm I found myself at The Little Door where the Djembe boys were meant to be playing The gig was an ecstatic one and made the nonschlep all the more worthwhile The general Versova vibe and the musicians I encountered also got me thinking about my general life choice about Khar and Bandra as hanging out zones It takes me much longer to reach either suburb than it now takes for me to arrive in Andheri I think this emerging reality has got me questioning my social life in the cityIt was not randomly that I went to The Little Door It was to hear a particular musician someone who constituted the reason for my first visit to Versova the day before It had everything to do with me agreeing to perform at the third edition of Live at the Library an event hosted by a magazine Helter Skelter at Ministry of New a coworking space in Fort at Kitab Mahal Incidentally it is the same building where at least 17 years ago I used to attend the monthly meetings of the Poetry Circle which was where I had my first lessons in the art of criticism and the discipline of writing and the rigour it necessitated thanks to poets like Jerry Pinto Arundhati Subramaniam Jane Bhandari and Ranjit HoskoteWhen Sharon the magazines assistant editor called to ask when I might be available to participate in the event I gave her my dates and asked if it were okay for me to not just read out my work but to collaborate instead I was completely absorbed with the final days of the Khoj Residency and I could have taken the easy way out just read something Id written and published before But Id promised myself that 2017 would be the year I challenged myself by forcing myself to break free from my comfort zone and try the unimagined So I insisted on a musician preferably a violinist and Sharon was happy to oblige initially confirming two women but later apologising for their nonavailability on the 19th and so finally sending me a text with the number of a sweet lad who likes Bach memes a Jose Neil GomesI looked him up He turned out to be from Benaulim in Goa which was an instant advantage I thought Then I read about how he played at least 20 instruments from the violin to the guitar to the piano to the saxophone and clarinet though not necessarily at the same time Having now met him and performed with him Im amazed to realise that we could so easily not have metSince he plays gigs almost backto back sometimes surviving on an average of two hours of sleep a night in a week he could so easily have taken that night off so easily have been elsewhere But he agreed and I ended up writing a whole new piece for our performance about how attention can be a form of prayer and about how the tongue can be an instrument of ecstasyAnd I find Im leaving this city on a massive high hoping uncertainly that we might be able to repeat last nights performance because there was something magnetic about Neil playing the violin responding to my words I began to feel unafraid of failure I found myself letting go being vulnerable in front of an audience It was exhilaratingIn the end it is these incidental things that change the trajectories of our lives Sometimes an encounter with a person can be akin to an epiphany Often it involves going beyond the borders of your comfort zone like traveling to AndheriDeliberating on the life and times of Everywoman Rosalyn DMello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover She tweets RosaParx Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom