This is one hell of a story! and it has to start with this story! Because this is the coolest story of my musician life yet

Sometime late in 2006, I was travelling back from Delhi (after playing at the India Social Forum) with The Raghu Dixit Project and on the plane back to Bangalore, I bumped into Debbie.

See, at that time, I hadn’t travelled too much by flights and so I was not too familiar with how things work and for the first few flights that I took, I was stuck to my seat and just looking out of the windows most of the time and reading my books or listening to my iPod.

So anyway, being bigger than average Indians, I usually don’t fit too well in airplane seats and so try to sit next to the aisle and put at least one leg out and stretch it! so there I was stretched out and trying to get the most comfortable position I could find and the guy next to me had to go to the loo. Instead of getting out and sit right there and have to move again for him when he returns, I just moved off to the next row of seats and sat next to Debbie!

Debbie was trying to get her bottle of mineral water to open with no avail and asked me to open it for her. From there, we started talking and she was coolness personified! right from being in the US navy in operation desert storm to being a roadie for tons of rock bands on their tours including at one time, “Grateful Dead” to being an art school major to getting tattooed to the complete blonde act to earning obscene amounts of money in the IT industry!! “Groovy!” was one of her phrases along with “Yeay!! Whooo” and she used those for every little thing!

So we land in Bangalore and the hotel had forgotten to send her a cab, so I end up dropping her to her hotel and she forgets her wallet in the car which I promptly take back to her hotel and return to her. We chat some more and then decide to meet for dinner! So Shilpa and I took her to Samarkhand that night for some food she has not eaten! And we had a blast!

So anyway, I told her about the band I played for and how I was planning to at that time take music more seriously and getting myself a good guitar was part of that plan. And she told me how she knew a friend of hers who ran a music store in California and she’d see if she can help with it.

Once she went back to the US, she got her friend to arrange for a couple of different models of Warwick Guitars to be present in the store, and then drove over 200 miles to pick up my very good friends and bandmates from Phenom, Mrinal and JD and took them to the store where Mrinal picked this guitar from the different models that were available.

Debbie then paid for that guitar and drove Mrinal and JD back to their place 200 miles away with the guitar! A total journey of close to a 1000 miles and she has paid for the guitar at this point!

When I heard what happened, I din’t know how to react!! I’ve never known a relative stranger do this much for someone they met over a weekend in another country! Debbie later told me that she just had this very good feeling after meeting me in India and that this was her way of paying me back for the ‘help’ I had provided when she was in India – which included taking her out for dinner and dropping her from the airport to her hotel! I was blown away by this gesture!!

I did pay her back in full and Shilpa’s (then to-be) brother-in-law Dominic, got the guitar down with him when he came to India from the US and I was able to hold the guitar in my hands on the 22nd of December 2006!

And that was just the start to the brilliant journey I have had as a musician with that bass guitar! Its been the most cherished thing I have ever bought in my life and I am sure it will be for a LONG LONG time!

Thanks Shilpa for putting it together and for everyone who was present in body and spirit!

This year holds a lot of promise … lets hope  most of it comes through …

Like every year, I promise to keep this journal more active and in fact move to my main journal and keep the photoblog active and updated regularly! I really need to invest time in photography and not just let it go to waste like it is now .. Lets see … I shall put it on the list of things I have to do and then shuffle it around priority wise and hopefully some interesting things should happen on that front.

I slipped into this new year in the most blissful and peaceful manner! and if the popular opinion that the ‘you will do for the rest of the year, what you do when the new year dawns’, is anything to go by … I will have a lazy, well rested, sleepy year ahead with lots of lovin’ !!   But knowing how things work out .. this year will be far from sit back and relax! but it will see a LOT of louvin’!!!

I survived the Bangalore traffic to make it to Ankita’s place where we were having our unique new year celebration! it was decided that we will make thin crust pizza and drink a lot of wine (and equivalent beverages) to herald the new year .. so Shilpa and I searched for some recipe’s and she went out and got everything that was needed for the pizzas while I went about meeting the liquid requirement.

By the time I arrived on the scene, most of the chopping was done and every little bit of space available had been taken up with the various ‘raw’ materials we were using for the pizza. The dough was mixed and yeast added for it to ‘rise’ to a sufficient level before we could go about making the pizza.

Since we din’t have an oven, it din’t leave us with much choice but to make pan fried pizza’s and obviously they were hand tossed! there was some wonderful music playing courtesy the lovely hostess Ankita and the wine was flowing from the makeshift ice bucket we put together and everyone seemed to be in high spirits and hopeful that the pizza’s would not disappoint. There was some impromptu dancing and nice conversation as the pizza was being cooked. My blocked nose meant that I could not smell the lovely smell that everyone else was vouching for so for me atleast, tasting was believing!

The Pizza’s finally arrived and they just beat all our expectations, they were the most amazing pizza’s we had ever tasted, at least, I had ever tasted in my life! Shilpa’s culinary skills now were beyond dispute and the first pizza had our jaws on the floor and stomachs rumbling for more! The customary fruit punch was prepared and it set us in the right mood for the rest of the evening The original plan was to go party hopping, which Sheila did (and how?!?!) or to have a movie marathon session complete with pop corn and juice! which we never ended up doing because all of us were so full and tired and sleepy.

We polished every little bit of pizza that was left and then just wished each other a hurried Happy New Year and plonked ourselves into bed! I am not so much the party type anyway, and Shilpa was not in her party mood either (I guess it has something to do with the driving around and the crowd, the parties we like are with good friends that we know and in places which are not too crowded) so it was perfect for both of us and for Ankita! I somehow stayed up till midnight, wished a few people who called, and then went to sleep after watching ‘Brothers & Sisters‘ for some time.

All in all, it was a wonderful, short and sweet start to the new year which in many ways will be one of the BIGGEST years of my life! Three cheers of course to the lovely chef of the evening and the hostess! and thanks to Sheela for the lovely company   I couldn’t have asked for more! Here is to many more lovely new years together!

“Agrees guitarist Gaurav Vaz, who recently spent upwards of a lakh on a new Warwick Streamer guitar. “It’s like getting a friend for life. And the personality does affect your music. Because of the way it sounds, and because when you are familiar with a guitar and are comfortable with the string positions and distances and so on, it’s easier to improvise because instinctively you know where what goes and what sounds you’ll get.” Of course, that process of getting accustomed isn’t complete until one formally names one’s cherished objects. Gaurav’s latest guitar, for instance, is called Deborah , after the woman from the U.S. who paid for his guitar with her credit card and shipped it down to him even though she had only met him for three days.

And his first guitar is called Gretchen, which means “little black pearl” in German. The only other necessary thing for most of these men is the wife or girlfriend that understands that she has to share his love with other things in his life or even take a backseat occasionally.”

The full article is at http://www.hindu.com/mp/2007/02/14/stories/2007021400220100.htm

This a picture of the beauty on duty!

Please note the lovely guitar strap made by the most beautiful of all my beauties the lovely Shilpa Sequeira !!