Beyond 2002: Events in Hyderabad

REVIEW FOR BEYOND 2002

It's the night of Cupid, and you and your epitome of a better half wait wide-eyed
for one of those annoying retro fad revivals that our culture constantly goes
through.

And keep waiting.

For, if history taught us anything, it's that patience is the path to digress into in such times as these. And also, you should not accuse a pygmy of being short until you have walked a mile in his moccasins. Do you know what Green-Room angst is? Especially when you have to keep yourself from having a stroke from the mental strain of keeping bits and pieces of clothes and plastic and feathers and what not intact on your body?

Columbus Entertainment presents - well, it surely will present, if a couple of hours of waiting don't unsettle your notions about that - 'Beyond 2002'. If anything was beyond, it was comprehension of why I didn't instead crack open a cold box of juice and spend the evening watching the bug zapper instead.

Sponsored by Shock and co-sponsored by Corporate Tours & Travels, Beyond 2002 endeavored to provide a platform for the music album Uff by Shashi Preetam. For that's all it could do - endeavor.

'Uff' is all about Persian and Hindi music, sung in the most unrecognizably rhapsodisical English rendition. Now we all know how the music biz gets buck dry of any semblance of creativity and simply bestows the same slodgy old awards upon their constantly changing industry. So here is some glint of brilliant novelty for the awardees to emulate. We wish the 'Uff' crew the best of luck, and some applause too when their album next plays.

The breathers for the evening most certainly were the world famous in India Rahul Dev, Aryan Vaid, Nethra Raghuraman and Shivangi Parikh. Rahul surely looked his stunning and cool self, though slightly amused at the lukewarm response of the audience. Not to his credit, as there were very few hip, trendy, media-savvy and emotionally unstable members among the audience. One wonders if the dark glasses were to prevent him from seeing the run-down faces across the ramp.

Some gossip columnists will say that a megalomaniacal fashion designer unleashed his army of anorexic, walking dead upon the unsuspecting audience. We are not saying that - just agreeing a little. We have reasons, too. Who else could have walked with a straight face in the 'Red Ferraris' with designer nooses, or 'Ethnic' 'Dancing On Plane' in a 'Paradoxical Psyche'?

The clothes were adventurous, in the funny category. The models did look gorgeous, though could no more get under your skin. But the intermittent dance numbers by very energetic kids were robbed of an enthusiastic welcome due to their sheer repetitiveness.

The show organizers ran out of ideas after their tirelessly exhaustive search came up with twin results. And so you were caught in the vicious circle of dancing, ramping, dancing and ramping, and occasionally giving out an Uff or two. Envy as you may feel, if you got left out, you got a better deal.

Ghazala Rizvi