But since he was a family friend, my mother (who didn’t give a single naya paisa for journalistic accomplishment) ordered him to accompany me in an auto each night to The Cellar (a disco in Connaught Place where I had just begun singing with the Human Bondage) and bring me back, because she didn’t trust me on my own.But I do have one complaint. Not Ramaswamy. Most of it was a dim memory. Boo hoo..Bhatia correctly concludes that of all the rock’n’roll musicians and bands that tried to “make it” in the big bad world in India, there’s been only one person who has succeeded.But all that fan-following and adulation didn’t lead to fame and fortune. And best of all, I didn’t have to go to college. My ex-husband Suresh, lead guitar player of the Human Bondage, refuses to read the book. His guitar is heavily influenced by Indian classical music.When Sidharth Bhatia contacted me about a year ago armed with a bunch of probing questions about my life as a rock’n’roll singer in the band Human Bondage some two centuries ago (well, I exaggerate, it was in the mid-70s), frankly, I was astonished. I guess that’s why the word “fan” comes from the word “fanatic”. Like the one about C.
He lives in Thailand now and I wonder if he’s learned enough Thai to control minds out there.Y. Rock’n’roll bands were competing with Bollywood while reproducing Jimmy Page’s guitar solo on Stairway To Heaven, and Carlos Santana’s wail on Evil Ways and producing perfect reproductions of Hotel California.But if I remembered nothing much (I don’t think I gave Sidharth anything concrete to go on), the opposite is true of the people who came to listen to us perform. I couldn’t really recall any specifics. This was India. CY would amuse me on those rides. I know the musicians wood screw suppliers who read this book will certainly enjoy reliving some of their antics. It’s a bit strange to review a book where you know so many of the characters, share a history with many of them and can still call a few of them friends. It didn’t matter. Sidharth, if you’re reading this, my name was Radha Ramchandra. He points out that while the going may have been tough for them back in the day, one of their records, Black Scorpio, sold for a whopping $3,000 on eBay in 2011. But there’s a case for recording and preserving Indian history, no matter how thin the slice or how irrelevant the subject matter is to the larger population.
He told me that he could make people do whatever he wanted merely by concentrating on the activity with all his focus. It made him famous. This despite the fact that according to JS, “Suresh Shottam is about the best guitarist in the country.Bhatia captures the ambience, the mood of the era in his book India Psychedelic impeccably — the parallels between the zeitgeist (which was basically to tune in, turn on, drop out, as decreed by one Timothy Leary), the bands that lapped up Leary’s diktat and the music that was in turn exhilarating or downright awful. And damn it if the auto guy didn’t oblige. I am sure that Bhatia’s book is going to bring back forgotten memories for a lot of people who lived through that era.Who cares about that I wondered. I loved reading India Psychedelic. Bhatia has patiently contacted dozens and dozens of bands from way back in the 60s, like the band Savages. I remembered having a lot of fun, being surrounded by cool-looking men, being in the spotlight, which was great.” Suresh is contrary like that. Bhatia rekindled many memories that I’d completely forgotten. Art is art and Indian rock’n’roll (and jazz) artists don’t ever get the kind of recognition their hours of practice and heart-felt performances ought to command. Gopinath, a friend and writer for Junior Statesman or JS (the only magazine that ever covered the activities of rock’n’rollers and even put our pictures on their pages), had done a story about the life of a beggar by dressing up as one and actually living on the street to write a first-hand experience.
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