As a powerful man who commands an infallible media organisation, I was relatively humbled by the turn out at the Global Citizen festival/ Coldplay Concert/ BJP’s 2017 Municipal Election rally. 80,000 people is a number matched only by the likes of Dadar Station and the number of girls who’ve rejected my advances this week. It was an event attended by celebrities, people who think they’re celebrities, politicians, industrialists, the media, people who paid 1 lakh to watch Ranveer Singh, and a bunch of freeloaders who faked caring about gender equality to get free Coldplay tickets, basically everything wrong with the world within 1 square kilometre.
To most people, a charity performance from a band whose core demographic is teenage girls that turned into a giant festival attended by some of the most powerful people in the country might sound incredibly suspicious, if not diabolical. But let’s try not to think about that. Let’s talk about my favourite highlights of the 9 hour concert instead!
1) The pain in Frieda Pinto’s eyes
Frieda Pinto being booed off stage by 80,000 people after audaciously trying to bring up the issue of women’s education at a gender equality event.
2) Chris has a woman moment
Chris Martin abruptly pausing the show because he threw his guitar into the air at the end of a song and seemed genuinely surprised when it stopped working in the middle of the next one. Chris, buddy, everyone loves smashing guitars but at least wait till you’ve finished off your last song before you break it. That’s rock n’ roll 101. The problem with intentionally breaking your guitar in the middle of a show is that you still have 45 minutes of performance time, and no guitar. It’s okay, we still love you.
3) This was highly unexpected
Prime Ministers Modi’s onscreen address to young India, which could be described as a humorous, informative speech by a strong leader, or an unnecessary politicisation of an event on giant screen that looked ominously like 1984’s Big Brother; depending on whether you’re a bhakt or sickular, khangressi aaptard.
4) Please get off stage, but I still want your number
Two DJs whose names I refuse to learn nearly starting an armed revolt because people standing in a sweaty crowd for 7 hours are in no mood to hear pre-recorded music; unless it’s Ananya Birla, who is basically just Rebecca Black with 8 billion dollars. It’s a good thing they were hot as hell.
5) Demi Lovato dressed as sexy Bappi Lahiri
Everyone over the age of 22 and under the age of 19 struggling to remember who in the world Demi Lovato is.
6) Black people are so cool
Jay Z busting out 99 Problems and reminding people that real concerts are supposed to pump you up and make you rage; not sway sadly because you realise you’ve lost your only chance at true love and no matter what you do or how hard you try you’ll never be able feel that way about anyone ever again. Fuck.
If I could go back in time and relive the concert would I do it? Absolutely. Would I pay for it? No.
