(X+Y)2

(X+Y)2

Circa January 2005.
Hrishi exploded into my room and said "Do you fancy Coldplay .......LIVE !??
Me: Do I what... !!??
The Coldplay Twisted Logic Tour had been announced and the tickets were on sale from the next day. It was Jan and the gig was in June. Now that was as long as after-life.
Hrishi: Make up your mind quick ! Coldplay's returning to UK after 2 years. I doubt we are the only ones who want to be there.
And there I was shelling out 40 quid for a concert ticket. The logic used to convince ourselves was, If we can spend 10 quid on some dumass band in the LCR, 40 quid for Coldplay was certainly worth it (whatever !) . Tickets were bought , pockets were emptied.....and after the initial ballyhoo the concert tickets were duly forgotten.

Circa June 2005.
Hrishi promptly reminded me of our 'investments'. The concert was on a monday. There it was, all lab work taken care of, all set to go. All the while I had completely no clue where Crystal Palace was. London. ( Avi: LONDON !!!??? .....yes, London, u know , fish n chips, cup o' tea, bad food, worse weather, mary ****ing poppins London !)
Yikes ! I had a secret dislike for that place. We needed to plan this trip out... and there it was, a no plan trip.
We hit the rail station at around 6 45 am and our train was at around 7 20. Hrishi had conned his friend to part with her 7mp digital camera (heh, heh , heh Sucker ). We courteously posed for photographs and were finally on our way. This being my first train ride in England I was excited for the first 5 minutes until.....a herd of Miss Mallus (techies working in London , i think) got in at Ipswich. Drats, these 'gerls' crapped on our brains. Ofcourse you see everybody else either are reading the "Sun" or have dozed off. Finally after a tormentous hour we reached Liverpool Street station, half expecting to see Ernakulam. Liverpool Street is well organised chaos. There are people stepping on your toes and walking all over your face just like u might have been in Majestic or Mysore bus stand. Hrishi and me expectedly found ourselves going in no particular direction. My laziness being of the aristocratic type, I gave Hrishi a " Alright ! Which way, driver ?" look. Before my facial muscles got a chance, Hrishi asked " Kuch idea hai kya ? Crystal Palace ke liye kaunsa line pakadna hai..." . "Oh for ****'s sake you are the expert you tell me". 5 minutes later we were in a Blue Line tube (i think) bound to the far end of the Earth via Crystal Palace. Thats all we gave a sod about. According to the expert it would take about 40 minutes to Crystal Palace. Bloody hell, i thought, thats half our journey from Norwich. Eh ! Its Hrishi's job to find out (just like buying the tickets, booking the train tickets, checking the dates, waking me up etc etc). And like good boys, we sank into our peaches, pears and Apple juice (Made from 5% concentrate, ofcourse). My schoolboy excitement was barely concealed in my 16:9 wide screen grin. At every station I jumped like a puppy dog to see which station it was. About 15minutes later, Hrishi, seeing that my 'situation' has'nt improved, decided to take matter into his own hands. At the next station before I could do my jump, he said " Relax yaar, Crystal palace abbhi bahut door hai. Tab tak tu pear kha". Righto, maybe I should stop acting like a chump. Maybe, I should eat the pear and drink Apple juice. The train pulled out of the station slowly and we suddenly realized we had'nt read the board on this one. And holy mother of god.....yes, it read Crystal Palace station. Now we had done it. It was already 10 am in the morning. we knew the crowd would be filling up at the venue and here we were, gaining speed moving OUT of Crystal palace. Drats !. I looked at Hrishi and he says "..er..looks like I should have let you be a puppy dog". Ofcourse we being the mature type, decided not to panic. We chalked out a counter move. We get down at the next station and take the next train going in the opposite direction. Yes, our genius lies in the simplicity. We waited for half an hour for the next train and promptly hopped in. The train started moving towards Crystal Palace......for 5 minutes and changed direction at a Y-intersection. Doggone it ! Now we didnt even know where we were headed, forget Crystal Palace. Ofcourse our genius prevented us from asking other londoners. We got down at the next station and this time excelled ourselves by actually reading the Train table and the route map. No goofs this time, we finally had reached crystal Palace. As we had guessed there was'nt much crowd outside the gates. Luckily for us, we were one of the first group of people to arrive. By this time we were hungry and wanted to eat. We knew that once the crowd builds up there was no way we could leave the place. As we walked out of the venue, we saw a shop with a board outside declaring fresh sandwiches and juices. Ah! just what we needed. Our relief was short lived as soon as we entered the shop. We asked the Mallu shopkeeper for sandwiches. "No , we dond zell zandwijh". ****ing idiot, then why do you have a board outside ? No no we dond zell. Now we could'nt exactly take him hostage, could we ?
A few paces down the street brought us to a cafe run by an eastern european couple. Latvia, Romania or one of those places nobody ever goes to. We gorged ourselves stupid and drank what was one of the best milk shakes I had ever tasted. Now all we had to do was wait till 4 pm to be let in the stadium.
This was also a theological turning point in our lives. London, u see, has the most sodding weather in the entire solar system. There are fools, then there are optimists, then there are the insane and then there are the people who say the weather in London will improve. No matter what, its always gloomy and rains. But heck no, GOD intervened in the daily proceedings and made it so bloody hot that I had sun burns waiting outside the gates. It was undoubtedly one of the hottest days ever. GOD exists alright. We had him poking our butts the whole day. Finally, after what appeared as our combined life times, it was 4 'o clock. The funny thing about the crowds in the UK is, they don't ever push nor is there a stampede. They seem to be completely oblivious of the joys of pushing and shoving. I'm talking of a massive gathering of 50,000 people. When we entered the stadium we could'nt believe our eyes. There it was, the stage set up with most brilliant looking lights and equipment, and NO ONE in front of us ! We were in the darned second row. We were completely thrilled to bits. As we waited the crowd started filling the entire complex and in half hour it was packed. And we were thirsty. We kind of knew that there was no way we could move and look for a drink. Then we suddenly saw this chap holding a crate of Carling. Ha, the saviour angel. Hrishi waded his way through the crowd and got us 2 pint-sized paper cups of cold Carling. Boy , nothing could have been better. There we were waiting for Coldplay to begin, holding cold Carling in our hands. All was well until.........Hrishi's bladder made its presence felt. We looked around and all we could see were 49,998 people and no way to go. Hrishi determined to let nothing wee on his parade, set in search of the loo, the brave Viking chief, but with no luck he was back. Damn Carling, Damn bladder, Damn wee.
Watching the technicians and road crews set the stage was magic. The amount of computer controlled almost robot-looking equipment was like nothing we had ever seen. By 6pm, the opening act Morning Runner came on stage. Never heard them before, but pretty good stuff considering its a new band in the UK scene. The next act was Supergrass. Now here was a band I always wanted to see live. These guys are brilliant on stage. Of course the usual hits like "Pumpin' on the stereo" were played and by 8.15 it was time for COLDPLAY. Though I didnt really get comfortable with their latest album "X&Y" , Hrishi had assured me that the songs will 'grow' on me. Well, admittedly the 'growth' has been pretty slow. But I am an absolute fan of their first two albums and were the reasons for me being here. Though they didnt play my all time favourite "Trouble", they did play "Yellow", "Clocks" and "Scientist". The Clocks performance was undoubtedly one of the best moments of sound and laser. The live performances were harder than the orginal studio versions which gave an adrenalin surge punching right through our skulls. I had scant regard for the drummer until now. Will Champion is an awesome talent, with maddest drumming I had ever seen. Respect. Chris Martin and Will Champion clearly stole the show. Chris Martin is sonorous with an amazingly high pitch. Everything was swashbuckling until Coldplay pulled a dull trick on us. U know, the retarded rock n' roll stage trick. "Good Bye Crystal Palace , Thank you ever so much , you have been great tonight". All the lights are turned off, technicians pretend they are dismantling equipment.......and.....suddenly ...Coldplay reappear and play their last set. They did lose a few points in my eyes, for this "comeback" trick. But they could be easily forgiven 'cos what a comeback set it was. Ending with an awesome performance of "Fix you". Apparently, this performance was taped and is part of one of their new videos. We did grin the widest hoping to catch some of the cameras. Hrishi went easy on the antics, what with his bladder still making splashing noises inside.
Getting out of the stadium took over an hour. We bought some greasy stir-fry and made our way out. There was no way we could take the train at Crystal Palace station. There was nearly a kilometer long queue of people waiting to get out. And to make matters worse the tube shuts down at 12. We finally guided our confused souls and tired legs to Liverpool Street station by 2 am. Ah the final test for our well planned trip. When we got to Liverpool Street Stn, we were told that the station is closed and will open at 5 am and we cannot sit inside the station. Damn! It was already very cold. There we were, prowling the streets of London at 2 am in the morning, looking like dorks. We somehow killed time till 5 am when the station was opened. By this time our silly asses were frozen and mind completely numb with sleep. We went to our platform and ofcourse the train was'nt there yet. We found a warm cozy place in the tickets section and slept like dogs. At around six we crawled to the train and I dont remember anything else. After a short gap in memory I was back in Norwich, with the memories and of course 256 MB of blurry photographs.