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The Rediff Special/ Suparn Verma

'Today, things have crossed the limits, young people are doing everything in public'

People who will be found kissing and hugging during the concert will be arrested."

That's it. The diktat, courtesy Shantaram Nandgaonkar, president, Maharashtra Stage Performances Scrutiny Board. You -- assuming you were one of the many who turned up to watch Australian pop group Savage Garden perform live, at the SNDT grounds, Bombay, on May 2 -- obey, or else.

Model/veejay/actor Marc Robinson went the "or else" route, with a vengeance. After reading, out loud the above notice, Robinson turned to fellow compere Sophiya and went "Hey baby, come here I feel like giving you a kiss!"

The crowd cheered. The Morality Police, presumably, fumed.

And so they kissed, Marc and Sophiya out there, on stage, under the glare of the hot spots...

Nandgaonkar, whose responsibilities include not merely policing rock concerts, but also checking plays performed in the metrop's many auditoria for 'vulgar' content, is the guy who will decide on the "future course of action" to be pursued in the case of the clinching couple.

A most reasonable man is friend Nandgaonkar. He isn't out to spoil your happiness, no way. "We are not against holding hands," he says, the soul of permissive generosity, "but we want to stop all this nonsense behaviour that is happening in the concerts, kissing and hugging in public spaces are very shabby behaviour. We want to protect our culture against Western influences.

"Today, things have crossed the limits, young people are doing everything in public, holding hands is okay, but kissing and hugging and going beyond it? Everything should be limited."

Nandgaonkar's own morals are safe as houses -- he has, by his own admission, never attended rock concerts (this being his debut), relying rather on reports and complaints from "concerned members of the society".

As part of his brief -- which is chief moral policeman for the metro, no more or less -- he personally inspected, and passed, the lyrics of one of Garden's most sought after numbers, Universe.

Said lyrics, in case you were curious about them -- it always helps to know what you can, and cannot, say/sing on stage, is: Well I'd like to take you as I find you/Imagine our clothes are on the floor/Feel my caress so soft and gentle/So delicate you cry for more...

Ummmm... those lines, of course, are not suggestive of anything other than, errr, a tendency towards littering the floor with discarded clothing. Or are they?

The problem, says Nandgaonkar, is not so much with what is sung, but the graphical gestures that accompany said lyrics. "While singing," says our friendly neighbourhood morals cop, "the singers shouldn't be dancing in a vulgar fashion, otherwise the audiences will be incited too. The lyrics have to be clean, otherwise what are we teaching them?" he asks.

Savage Garden apparently got the message... the duo of Oz warblers went Om Shanti Om almost as soon as the concert got underway, obviously paying obeisance to the new regime.

Public memory being notoriously short, we have, of course, completely forgotten that just over a year ago, a certain Michael Jackson set the Andheri sports stadium on fire with his suggestive lyrics accompanied by the crotch-grabbing dance style that is a Jacko trademark. On that occasion, no less than Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray ran the serious risk of having his morals seriously impaired, seated as he was right in the very first row.

"The Michael Jackson show was cleared by the central government, so we couldn't do anything," claims Nandgaonkar.

Isn't the same true of the Savage Garden concert as well. "Yes, well, even this show was cleared by the central government, but things have been brought to our notice, hence we are taking action. In the Michael Jackson show things were not so bad, and after that no concert has taken place."

Uh... what price Samantha Fox? Jon Bon Jovi? Michael Learns to Rock? Shaggy? Diana King? Almost all of them coming after the Jackson songfest and, as far as lyrics go, none of them exactly suitable for kindgarten?

"I didn't know about them, but anyway we now have had some complaints so we will look into it." This, from Nandgaonkar. Apparently, though the damage -- incalculable, we presume -- has already been done to the public psyche by the aforementioned artistes, retrospective action will be taken.

Why is the government playing big brother?

"It is not that we are afraid of sex, the government is like a parent, if the child is going astray it is up to us to take care of them. We should control the habits of the people, look at the West, they are turning towards religion, while we are forgetting our culture and turning towards them. Look at their culture where they do everything in public, now they have grown tired of sex. We have a great culture and we must save it."

Does this moral purging include, say, the celluloid offerings of the late Dada Kondke? Or the traditional lavni, with its no-holds-barred lyrics and gestures, which hold our rural brethren in thrall?

"You see," explains Nandgaonkar, who apparently doesn't take the government's parental duties seriously when it comes to our country cousins, "their thinking is different, it is made for them, but then you cannot have the same thing being done in the city otherwise what will be the difference?"

In other words, vulgarity is okay... as long as it is outside of city limits. It reminds you of the old slogan, doesn't it? "Keep your city clean -- dump trash in the suburbs!"

At the concert, the "children of the government", who had shelled out 350 bucks apiece for the privilege of bopping to the Savage Garden beat, were obviously unamused. "Tell those jokers to **** ***, man," goes Jayesh, a Mithibai College student who we quote, here, with due respect to Nandgaonkar. "Who are they to tell us what to do or not to do? They can't even run the country properly or behave themselves, and they'll tell us what to do?"

His girlfriend smiled agreement and gave him a hug.

"I'll hug and kiss my girl just to show these guys what we think of their rules," went a defiant Parul, PR-man for a metro-based music channel.

The concert, which started an hour late, and was constantly interrupted by the takeoffs and landings at Santa Cruz airport, ended at 10 pm sharp -- again, courtesy the police who figure that any public entertainment beyond that time will seriously damage the morals, or sleep patterns, or whatever, of the locals.

And through the duration of the concert, you saw officious looking guys walking up and down, peering closely at couples... checking, presumably, for signs of canoodling...

The mood of the show was best epitomised by a young girl who, observing a couple in a clinch, hopped up and down in undisguised glee.

"Pramod Navalkar haar gaya, Pramod Navalkar haar gaya!" she yelled... while those near enough to hear her over the noise of the Garden at its most Savage, grinned...

The Rediff Special

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