Up and Up To Pune !!
The relatively small size of the airport took me by surprise not to mention the plenty of fighter jets and chartered aircrafts as well. Pune welcomed me at around 11.15pm in the night because of the delay in flight. My friend Arijit was waiting outside the airport gate, which was like a 2 min walking distance.
We cruised through the heart of the city in his new Suzuki Gixxer. He had just developed biking as his latest passion, quite evident from the swift acceleration he was taking. We reached Wakad at around 12.15 am in the night. One thing I could figure out about Pune that it was peaceful and less populated like the huge metros. A very striking similarity with my hometown !!
Namaste Mumbai !!
Started for Mumbai on the 19th morning bus. Entering the Bandra area in Mumbai, we saw a lot of road markers all pointing the way towards Global Citizen India. It was not hard to realize that this one was going to be grand !!
As we took an auto to BKC, Bandra Kurla Complex I knew we are entering into the heart of the city. With offices of Citi, JSW, Merrill Lynch , JP Morgan surrounding this area, it was not to hard to realize the commercial fame surrounding this region.The first thing that caught my attention was the huge queue of people. Too significantly longer than all Jio sim card or ATM withdrawal queues I have come across in recent times !! Seemed like patience has
become the latest trend for we Indians :)
The gates to the grounds were segregated based on the zones of tickets you were holding. Since we were the free green zone holders our queue was no less than a serpentine caterpillar whose tailtip was hard to be found.
Nevertheless we stood behind the queue which started moving slowly. One could very well sense the pulse of the event from the young cheerful crowd. 80k people - not a matter of joke, heh!
Kudos to the Maharashtra Police for their tireless efforts in keeping the area secured !! No fags or alcohol was to be allowed within the grounds. Have to say the organizers had kept their word onto that!
Hey!! I am going in !!
The first thing I saw after entering MMRDA were the 2 huge balloons flying up in the air written Global Citizen India over it! (I saw this earlier in events like TomorrowLand mostly hosted out of India.) It was a T-shaped stage and the center of it was a disc shaped screen. Again this kind of a stage was beyond expectation!
The whole ground was properly divided into zones separated by barricades. Proper sized LED screens were present all over the ground. Our zone was quite afar from the stage and securing a spot near a LED screen seemed the need of the hour !
There were food counters located by the side of the grounds, and water bottles were being given for free.
There were food counters located by the side of the grounds, and water bottles were being given for free.
The crowd started gathering in slowly. Seemed no less than a super mega sized college fest to me, particularly because of the young energy brimming around.
Consider the sun out with full intensity at a Sunday morning 11 am and you are in the middle of the field awaiting for the start of an event in another 2 hours!
How do you keep your cool? Only when you know that you are up for a high energy musical retreat !!
3..2...1-- Here We Go !!
The show began at 1.30am, perfectly as promised (again, punctuality, something not so common). There was this voice that said that you are now a part of the 80 thousand crowd witnessing history and you hereby give the permission to be filmed. And the fact that we were all on air in VH1 and Voot as well !!
A small band of young children named Mumbai Basti started the performance. Arijit Singh took the crowd when he started Aae dil hai mushkil!! I could hear some ladies even calling him a cute teddy bear !!
Monali Thakur sang brilliantly well and gave a nice performance to an English number, in a very appreciable accent quality.
The show started gaining momentum when Shankar Ehsaan Loy started with his 'Breathless' and 'Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani' !! Parineeti Chopra, Arjun Kapoor, Ayushman Khurrana and SRK were good in keeping us engaged. When the big screens showed all of us waving the hands and drones taking a shot from the above, you have to see to believe how massive this crowd was !! And the energy was unbeatable!! Shraddha Kapoor was singing in karaoke and gave a quite good performance despite fighting with the intial nervousness.
Amitabh Bachhan had a brilliant performance when he recited the poem in his Pink movie. The love that people have for Big B can be felt from the electrifying atmosphere around!! Farhan Akhtar had a chance to relive 'Rock On' on-stage, only from a performance point of view !! (singing wise he really has a longer way to go)
East India Comedy took on the humour side of the crowd!
Going International
Demi Lovato took on the crowd by fire!! Surprisingly most of the girls around my area were humming with her. At around 6 pm in the evening, The Vamps took on the stage. The young band from London were highly energetic in their performance!! The lead singer, Brad Simpson, had a lovely time performing in front of the stage cameras. One of the good moments was when he caught hold of the camera and made the guy walk towards the T-shaped stage taking a wider view of the audience! He was in love with the cameras and seemed like it was the first time for them performing before such a huge crowd !!
Jay Z gave us a gala time!! We rocked with him as he kept rapping many of the songs. The drummer was a treat to watch!! Lovely to see all the people rapping together with him. I could understand that I have to hear more international singers :) Many eminent celebrities visited the stage in between, making some mighty announcements for helping sanitation, improving education across India. A group of spiritual people were also on stage - truly global this was!
The crowd was getting mad to hear Coldplay now. Just then, Narendra Modi appeared in the giant screens in VC mode. Seems like he was the primary man behind bringing this event to India !! The crowd hailed his name - no less than rockstar fame for our PM as well !!
By 7.30 PM, impatience started to hit all of us, as we all started shouting 'Coldplay! Coldplay! Coldplay!' Sachin and SRK tried hard to contain us, while a group of lady DJ's from Australia tried to fill the space with some basic musical stuff in between.
An Adventure Of A Lifetime
Lights turned out!! The stage lit up with the colours of the much known logo - and the extreme shout from the crowd made it clear - people had stored their best for this!
And you the people have the power to make this life a wonderful adventure ...a wonderful adventure....a wonderful adventure !!!!
And then the guitar started playing and and unknown spurt of madness, excitement, happiness, love and nostalgia unleashed from the crowd of eighty thousand people.
My eyes still could not believe that it was not something I was watching in Youtube. This was live!! I was jumping on my feet and welcoming the band which was performing for the first time in India after 20 years since inception.
Chris clearly showed his love for this nation, when he addressed us in his newly learned Hindi - kaisey hai sab....namaste mumbai....
The next 2 hours was a complete immersion! Like a holy dip into a river where the sky was yellow, and bells were ringing, and the sound of the waterfall had it saying that I should keep hymning my heart out this weekend !!
This was the full set of songs they played
1. A Head Full Of Dreams
2. Yellow
3. Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall
4. The Scientist
5. God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
6. Paradise (into remix
7. Magic
8. Everglow
9. Clocks (into Midnight)
10. Charlie Brown
11. Hymn For The Weekend
12. Fix You
13. Viva La Vida
14. Adventure Of A Lifetime
15. Don't Panic
16. In My Place
17. Maa Tujhe Salam ft. A R Rahman
18. Channa Mereya
19. A Sky Full Of Stars
20. Up & Up
My dream got fulfilled in India!!
The dream for which I have waited for a long long time...........................................
Below are some of the videos I captured from my phone:
