First Time at a Concert

It doesn't start easy. You don't start headbanging to the first song, the second one or even the third. Initially, you simply tap your legs. You notice some people jumping up and down like there's no tomorrow and conclude that your social anxiety will never let you be one of them.

And then it happens. You can't pinpoint when or why you started banging your head, but before you know it, you're grabbing onto your friend's shoulder, shouting your lungs out to a song you barely know and jumping up and down.

The impossible happened. You're one of them now.

My idea of a concert was that you're supposed to know the lyrics to all the songs being performed. The haunting vision of me standing awkwardly in the middle of a crowd, not knowing the lyrics to a popular song as my friends bang their heads made me cringe.

So I did my homework and spent an entire evening rediscovering Bay of Bengal, Conclusion, Warfaze and Meghdol. At 3.30 AM, with my neck aching after headbanging to "Je Shohore Ami Nei" by Bay of Bengal, I heard someone in the back shout to her friend, "I have four reports to complete this mid-break and I have no idea how I'm going to do it!"

I looked back and there she was, jumping to a song she didn't even know. Concerts, ironically enough, aren't all about the music. It isn't really about knowing the lyrics or loving the bands, not as much as we think it is. It's about being a part of the crowd and forgetting your stress, your grief, your anxiety.

It's an escape from reality, even if for those 40 seconds you're capering until your knees hurt and you run out of breath.

Friends crying to "Purono Shei Diner Kotha" or Warfaze singing "Boshe Achi" at six in the morning in front of a crowd that's been waiting 13 hours for this moment – it all sounds overwhelming once reminisced. I saw the soft glimmering ray of the sun shine above a roaring campus, saw someone cover his loved one with a shawl in that piercing winter morning and sing "Purnota" together.

Yet, something else stood out.

Around 2.30 AM, as Meghdol sang "Maya Cycle", I looked up at the foggy night sky. The moon was just shy of a full one. In a crowd of hundreds, the chaos didn't reach my ears anymore. Maybe it was 18 hours of sleeplessness paying off or maybe it was the solace in Shibu Kumer Shill's voice. I closed my eyes. "Ei Nai Hoye Jawa Shunnosthan" sang the last lines of the song which roughly translates to "this vanishing desolation."

After one and a half years of the pandemic, after fear engulfed our minds and anxiety agonised our souls, even if for those six seconds on a shivering December night, the desolation left in our hearts did vanish.

Remind Ifti to be quieter at hasiburrashidifti@gmail.com