The MI rock show took place in the SAC amphitheater, and the sound check would go on for what felt like hours (especially for the headlining bands).
The lines outside SAC would be long with the audience (quite drunk or high on cigarettes by this time) inside but especially outside starting to lose patience, inevitably leading to chants of ‘Start the f***g music’.
Being on the security team at MI was the hot ticket, especially with the unsanctioned perks that came with securing the rock show LiveWire. Security team junta would attempt to confiscate all the contraband after frisking the mostly male audience at the SAC gate. Usually guys attempting to smuggle in contraband would try to con some girls to carry it on their person as the security was not so stringent for them. Since the number of guys vastly outnumbered the number of girls attending, this was mostly not possible. So the guys tried to smuggle it themselves and unless you were buddies with the security honcho, your stuff was going to get confiscated and be dumped in a locked room in SAC. The real celebrations then happened after the rock show was all done and the security guys would be ‘sampling the merchandise’ and missing from the hostel the next day or two. As an outside observer, my earnest hope was that the weed had not been secreted away in the generous donor’s socks or underwear.
Not as funny, but the true story of the last hostel picnic: The mess secy loaded up a ton of meal ingredients, a few mess workers joined in (I think) and we headed off in a bus to the beach of Murud-Janjeera (maybe misremembering the name). Played a ton of cricket on the beach and all the other usual stupidity. Later in the evening a lot of the junta drank beer or Thums Up spiked with Old Monk and sang songs, I think there was a bonfire too. Chatur was one of the good guitar players and singers, as was Mogli. We somehow cooked the food out there and had dinner. Some of the carrots tasted really funny (story sanitized for human consumption here, only h6 insiders privy to details). Unbeknownst to us, someone had spiked the ThumsUp and Rum cocktail with some jadibooti. Tintin, Moonie (one yr junior to us) and I were walking along the beach late at night when the effects hit us and we just fell asleep on the beach rather than walk it back. Around 3 am, I woke up with a start. When I opened up my eyes, we found that the tide had come in and was nearly lapping our feet, but more pressingly we’d fallen asleep just below the compound wall of someone’s bungalow and two enormous guard dobermans were barking at us from 10 ft above. We then ran for our lives along the beach to get back to the main group.
