When lying is the only Option - Sharanpur gig story.

This gig started with a fraud, Yes that's right a fraud, but we were not aware of that until we went to Saharanpur. One of my friend called me up and said that there is a college called SEIT (Shobhit university) in Saharanpur who were in need of a band for the closing ceremony of their annual fest. We said yes as we were in serious need of money for recording and other expenses for band. So four of us excluding Akash (he had exams) started our journey in the local roadways bus since its the only service available to travel to Saharanpur. Hot, humid, and bidi people were in a good number and we were stuck in Sharanpur's traffic twice or thrice. We called up the SEIT people to get further directions from the Saharanpur bus stand and got a shock instead. The college was located 20kms away from Saharanpur in a place called Gangoh, which meant we had to take another local bus to there, which meant bidi people and strange bad smells all over again. We had no choice took the bus and got off at Gangoh, we were hoping that someone would be there to pick us up but no, no one. We called them again and they, in a very humble way suggested us to take rickshaw, mentioning the fair which was 20 Rs. Now imagine four guys dressed up to look like a professional band, to get the deal, sitting on a Rickshaw, going through a complete village area. Every single person was starring at us. Any way we reached the college and met the director of the college which was a lady. First thing she said, "You will have to play continuously for three hours, all Hindi songs " and at that very moment, we were convinced that we can't do this show. We took a chance and tried to explain it to her that we were not a Hindi band, showed her a few Videos and somehow succeeded. The Deal was fixed with good money and advance too. We were checking out the venue and sound requirement when all of a sudden she said " Actually some one from millennium university has referred you, that is the reason we called you up, You gave a great show at millennium university they said." And our jaws dropped. I looked at my friend who set us up for the gig and he was giving me guilty smiles non stop. We had to keep it covered since everything was already finalized. We left from there that day and reached Doon. Evening time, advance payment in our hands, so as our band law states, we had to party.
                                  

Next day we started practicing for the show, we were strictly instructed to play as per  the interest of SEIT students which was not at all what we actually play. Two days after practice, we were extremely bored and decided to cancel the gig instead of the fact we have already taken advance payment and spent it too. When we called them up for the same thing, they told us not to do so since they have already pasted posters by our names all over Saharanpur. It took us a good time to take the decision and since we are not bad people, we decided to get back on what we started and do it.

Booked a cab, invited Arijit da from Ashwamegh to join in, went there, literally rocked SEIT, few old people who were sitting as chief guests got pissed off and stopped us from playing after we have played for 1 hour 30 mints. It was a payed show anyway, we got our payment along with some gifts. SEIT people promised to invite us again if the old pissed off people allow, rushed back to Dehradun in the night, no stinky buses, only us singing shouting and screaming, had food and other good things at some dhaba, closed the chapter with an awesome party at Opal and lifetime memories.

Here are few pics 

The Cheapness, Me and Indresh Pathak :

God cant stop laughing while writing this, every time me and Indu ( Indresh Pathak ) see each other we laugh  so much while talking about this, that neither of us is actually able to speak about this weird cheap thing we did back in those days.
It starts like this, I was in my first year of graduation and Indu was in his second year, we had met only a few times since the first band war auditions where we actually met for the first time. We were really amateurs in planning jam sessions and thought everything haves a Jugaad. It was seven of us in the band that time, 4 vocalists, 2 guitarists  and one Indresh Pathak :D, we decided to have a jam session in the college itself since it was not possible for hostlers to get out of campus any time anywhere. Soon we realized that we need proper instruments and Amps to have a proper jam, we arranged it some how but drums were not available anywhere easily,which meant we had three options, 1. Buy it on our own which no one wanted to do since we were not even good friends 2. Make the college buy it, forget it the college still don't have even a flute and last one 3. RAISE FUNDS AND GET IT ON RENT. The third one is what we chose and the hillarious game was about to begin. No band member was ready to do it so me and Indu had to do it on our own. The plan was to go in every section every classroom of first year and ask them for funds, hitting there nerve of unity for"B-TECH". Second year students are always the people who don't give a shit to anything related to the college since they have suffered one year already, so no point going to them. So we started and the speaker for the first and last time was Indu,
INDU(Shouting) - Hi everyone we are a band called Crystal heads, we represent B.tech and you know what, we don't have drums. So i want everyone to contribute money as the drums will help the B.tech people to win. I am not forcing anyone if you want to be part of this great move of unity, do contribute.

As soon people heard that they have a choice to not to pay too, everyone shouted back " we don't want to be part of it", Indu lost his mind and had an argument with a couple of them. Result - Fail, I some how gathered Indu back and we tried a different approach. I was the speaker this time and we focused more on giving an idea that it is compulsory to contribute. Everything from there went well, we wrote down roll nos. and amount people were paying just to make it look more formal, sometimes we just acted as if we were writing,and the money started coming in.Everyone contributed 10 to 20 to 50 Rs. It took us whole day. In the evening we found an empty classroom and started counting the money. We needed around 2000 to 3000 bucks to get the drums on rent for at least two days and our collection was fairly more than that, I looked at Indu, Indu looked at me and we were laughing rolling on the floor. We got the drums and the Sabian symbols (a good brand for symbols ) too.We did it the next year too. Sorry 1st year students, we didn't had a choice that time. We won the Grafest three times everyone was happy and everyone forgot, but Me  and Indu..ha ha ha...Never.
Here's a rare pic of Indu with that drum kit, practicing one day before performance in the Civil lab.
Post your comments and let me know if what we did was write or wrong.