In which we go to the GnR concert and I troll the son

We went to the Guns N Roses concert yesterday, missus, son and I. Son graciously agreed to go on his own but missus wouldn't hear of it. She's terrified of him getting into bad company. I suggested that bad company should be terrified of getting into him.
"This is just the sort of wisecrack you men like to make. Where are your maternal instincts?"
I couldn't think of a suitable comeback to this and maintained a gentlemanly silence. There were the usual anxious moments without which no Shenoy family outing is complete. I had booked tickets online, which meant I got a mail which I had to print out, along with copies of my id and credit card and exchange all of that for tickets at the venue. I had assumed rock stars, like most shy mammals, preferred coming out after dark and thought 7 pm would be a good time to go. And then missus discovered that gates opened at 4pm. So we rushed and managed to reach breathless and panting - or, as Dr. Spooner would have put it, pantless and breathing - at 6pm to find that nothing had really started and wasnt expected to begin till 7.30. I tried to glare at missus but she just pinched my cheek and told me to cheer up and look at the bright side, we'd have an extra hour to look at the weirdos.

And we were well rewarded. Say what you will about rock shows, there is no denying that square meter for square meter, it has more strange creatures than an Amazonian rain forest. There were people who looked like they had been tucked into their clothes with a giant shoe horn, there were people who had tatooes all over whatever was visible of their bodies and last but not the least, at least a dozen people who could enter a fancy dress competition as potted plants and win.

The show started on time and as usual, I couldn't figure out a word of what they were saying. I always have this problem with western popular music. And yet, everyone else seeemed to know exactly what was being sung. Words, music, everything. I cowed down in submission

After a while, like the frogs in the pond in Aesop's fable who stopped being afraid of the log, I was emboldened to do my own head banging and silently mouthing imaginary lyrics. To the first song, I sang Hamlet's soliloquy, the to-be-or-not-to-be one, which I had been forced to memorize in school for an elocution competition, the only reward of which is that my schoolmates still call me Omlette, and the words fitted in remarkably well. And best of all, son was very impressed. "Wow, dude. Didn't know you knew the words to this one". I preened but by then the song had changed to "sweet child of mine" which I know because son plays it EVERY SINGLE DAY in the car when I go to drop him to school. However, I know only the words "sweet child of mine" so I sang Wordsworth's "Daffodils" except when they sang the "sweet child of mine" line when I did likewise. So I went "They wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vale and hill when all at once sweet child of mine" and son was none the wiser.

After sometime, my knees started hurting and so did my ears. Missus was looking the most forlorn I have seen her in decades. We held each other and swayed gently to the next song, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, (she probably sang something from Sajda, one of her favorite albums).

I spent the next hour or so thinking what fun it would be if Axl Rose metamorphosed into Mallikarjun Mansur and started singing Nayaki Kanada (Imagine the headlines: "Ten thousand rock fans die of cardiac arrest as Axl Rose sings Nayaki Kanada). Every now and then, whenever I could grab the lad's ear, I would suitably troll. Can't remember what it was exactly, I'll post when it comes back, but I remember it being raucously funny. Son of course "gave khunnas" as they say in Mumbai and a pleasant time was had by all

Cheers and bye for now. A Monday morning beckons, something that I'm never at ease with.