Second Love

The idea of starting a blog has been lingering in our heads constantly for the past few months. Now that we have achieved it, we want this to function as a medium of interaction between the band and our loyal followers. Please feel free to comment on our posts. It would also be great if you let us know what kind of write ups you folks would be interested in.

Having said that, we were wondering what to cover on our first post when it suddenly dawned to us that it would be great to showcase a side of ours that is unknown to everybody. Don’t get ideas. We are not from outer space.

So music is the epicenter of our lives. We just cannot live without it. It is an extension of our soul. Indian Ocean remains our first love and in the past nineteen years we have given it everything. It is the true purpose of our lives. We are fascinated and enthralled by some other things as well but our way of the world is to make music. We genuinely believe that our expressions lie in our compositions for Indian Ocean.

One aspect of being in a band that we cherish is the tours that we go for. Though we stay away from our families, as a band we find our solace in each other. These tours get extremely hectic with the vicious circle of travel-sound check-shows-travel, but we love the stage and enjoy feeding of an energetic crowd.

In spite of all the excitement that the band brings into our lives and with the very little time we have left for ourselves we turn to something called a hobby. Yes we sleep as well.

Photography, reading, bird watching and wildlife top our list.

The concept of photography in its entirety appeals to us.  Capturing the right expression of a person at a precise moment remains unique and the fact that the essence of that moment cannot be replicated, feels like magic.

We keep visiting the Corbett National Park. It is our favorite hunting ground for wildlife photography. An ideal destination far way from the hustle of urban life.  Located in the beautiful sub-Himalayan belt of Nainital, we seek refuge in this destination when we need a break from the world. Studying habitats of those who are wild can get extremely interesting. This serves as our bird watching destination as well.

Reading, the universal habit of man. In between the four of us we read everything from fiction to works of Mahashweta Devi to biographies on the life of John Coltrane. We try not to go with the flow when we read. It feels like an adventure to read a book that nobody has seen or heard off. It is like sailing in unchartered waters. Exploring the unexplored. We always try to look at the cultural context of a particular piece. Be it a work of fiction or a memoir.

Apart from this, as we mentioned music is our first love. So we keep experimenting with it. Learning how to play the saxophone or discovering unidentified Indian instruments remain some of our favorites.

But no matter what we all do with our lives end of the day it is our self-esteem and our self-confidence that pays off. We have immense faith in the young generation of India. We believe that this generation is filled with custodians of talent and some visionaries who can make our country one of the brightest in the world.

As individuals we have discovered that it is always your morals and your values that help you to stand on your feet. It is always better to make your own set of values as well. Following somebody else’ is simply pointless. Find out a niche for yourself and stand up for it. The things that we create with our own hands are always the one’s that stay precious.

So that’s us when we are not full scale tune makers. Or wait. Did we mention food?

That is one more thing that binds us together. All kinds of it Indian, Italian. German, Thai. All of us can be tagged as foodies. Good food leads to good music. That is something we believe in.

In the end we would like to thank our families for always standing by us and supporting us in all our endeavors. We really miss them when we are away on tour.  Spending day in day out with each other, the four us get bored of each other sometimes. So when we return from a long tour we hardly see each other. This is  the time that we dedicate to our families and love them whole heartedly. But then again after a while we are itching to get back together as a band and create musical fusion. That is the stimulating factor of our lives that helps us to go on.

To all of you who have supported us over the years.

Cheers

Indian Ocean!

~ by indianoceanband on July 10, 2009.