I said, Aasha, best job in the world!”
She smiled back in response. Sometimes, it really was a rewarding job. She stole a quick glance at the street clock before rechecking her schedule.
“We need to wrap this up, Jeff. We’re meeting the media liaison officer – Duncan McIntyre, in fifteen minutes.”
“McIntyre? I met the guy last year when I was here and the two years before that as well. He is a pretty cool guy. You’ll like him. He always gives answers.
Besides this is his eighth season here. He literally knows the festival like the back of his hand.”
“Welcome Ms. Singh,” Duncan McIntyre offered his hand to Aasha. He almost had to double down his six feet five frame to reach her outstretched hand. “Is this your first time here? At the festival?” he asked her, his unruly blond hair falling across his forehead and into his ice blue eyes.
“Please, call me Aasha,” she insisted before addressing the remainder of the question, “Yes, it is my first visit. I am very excited about the programme. And you know my colleague, Jeff Mars.”
“Jeff, welcome back. Always good to have friends return to us!”
Duncan had a very easygoing vibe about him. Aasha could see why people gravitated towards him. He was dressed in khakis and a crisp white shirt, but he wore them with an edgy attitude – there was definitely a little rocker in the mix of things. He turned back to address Aasha, “If you’ll follow me, I’ll walk you through all the significant bits of the festival, and I’ll try to answer any questions you may have along the way. I’m dropping you off with The Crashing Waves Collective, right?
Aasha stepped in line, matching his pace. Jeff was right behind her. “Yes, that’s right. I’ve interviewed them before, actually. They are a talented duo.”
“Yeah, we believe so. And great lads to share a pint with too.”
Duncan introduced Aasha and Jeff to the inner workings of the festival – the various practice rooms, sharing histories and trivia, as well as old hands, people who had been with the festival since conception. Jeff kept the camera running all through the exchange.
Keeping Jeff’s advice in mind, Aasha didn’t waste any opportunity. “So, Duncan, since we are on camera, tell us about the surge in artistes from the Subcontinent at this year’s festival. Was it by design?”
Aasha couldn’t help but notice Duncan’s ease with the camera. He clearly had enough experience to understand camera angles and light. He held his body just right. He would translate really well on screen.
“It was something that just happened to be honest,” he said with a slight shrug. His eyes twinkled and he had an easy smile. Yes, there was no doubt he’d look good in the capsule. “I mean, we didn’t sit down and say all right this year let’s have a record number of artistes from this region of the world,” he continued as they navigated a beautiful corridor with mosaic murals on either side. “We wanted great music on display at the festival and we went about assembling a set that did just that.”
Jeff asked them to hold off on the conversation as he took a few quick shots of the passage way, the artwork, and the building interiors. These would be filler shots, barely a second or two long in the final product, but they would give that touch of authenticity to the story.
While Jeff was busy, Duncan made small talk, sharing ghost stories (“Come on, Aasha, every half-decent cultural festival in this part of the world has a resident haunting they are proud of; we do too!”) and his cigarettes with Aasha. He also extended an invitation for evening drinks at his favourite pub. “You’ll get to meet some of the other artistes there as well. It’s a great environment.”
When Jeff was done, he turned his attention back to Duncan and they resumed from where they had stopped.
“If people still want an answer to why we have a large concentration to artistes with roots in the Subcontinent this year,” he continued once they resumed the walk, “Well, we offer two options for that: it’s a coincidence or it’s an indication of a rich musical history. Personally, I believe it to be a bit of both.”
As they got closer to the Hub, where The Crashing Waves Collective were to perform later that day, their time together was drawing to an end. Aasha took the opportunity to ask Duncan one last question; it was a question she would repeat a number of times over the next few days, “Duncan, if there’s one South Asian artiste here you’d recommend, if there had to be just the one, who would it be?”
“Just one?” he asked, his darker eyebrows bunching up and hiding in his blond curls. She could see him thinking, the names churning around in his head, one after the other. And just when she thought he was going to back off from the challenge, his expression changed.
“We have some exceptional talent at display here. But if you put a gun to my head, there is this one guy – Aman Ali,” he pulled up a profile of a good-looking young guy on his tablet. “The kid’s from London, but originally from the Subcontinent. He is doing very interesting things with his music; I’d recommend him.”
Aman took a deep breath before he flashed his trademark boyish smile at the audience, all of whom were on their feet, applauding. Over the last eight months, Aman had received a fair amount of adulation, but this was a slightly different scale. This was overwhelming.
He clutched his guitar with his left hand, holding it suspended, slightly above the floor, as he thanked the accompanying musicians on the stage with him. As they took a bow, he did too. He then held out his right hand and waved to the crowd. This single glorious moment alone, he realized, made up for the colossal stress-ball of a year he had waded through to get here.
“Thank you!” he called out. His voice was surprisingly steady despite the flurry of emotions coursing through him. He was filled with a surge of hope and confidence; but there was also a hint of relief twirled around it. Music had always been a part of him, now he could be a part of music too.
His story was meant to have a very different ending. Aman had been on the fast-track before he deviated from the plan – one that involved a new Masters degree and a shiny corporate job. It was understood that he’d spend the next two years climbing the corporate ladder, establishing himself in the industry, and once he did, his parents would find him a wonderful Pakistani bride to settle down with. This would be followed with the social standard of two kids, fancy car and big house – a fairly acceptable happily ever after, if there ever was one. His parents were of a liberal tilt, of course. There would be no village girl for their Aman. No, they would find him a lovely foreign-educated Pakistani girl – a lovely foreign-educated Punjabi Pakistani girl. After all, Aman deserved the best.
The Ali family had relocated from Lahore to Vancouver when Aman was eight years old. They left their old crumbling family home, one they shared with a large extended family, to start over on the other side of the world.
In Lahore, Ashraf Ali was a bank clerk. It was a good, respectable job, but it wasn’t enough to sustain his brood of eight.
“Come to Canada. There are many options; the kids will have opportunities to do anything they like. What will you do in Pakistan? It will take you another ten-fifteen years to get to a good post.
