Transcendence gone handheld. Basant Panchami, someone’s living room. Malini Awasthi, Richa Sharma and Master Saleem erupting into Nazar Lagi Raja Tore Bangle Par from Kala Pani. This is combustion. Sixteen and a half unrepeatable minutes. Absolutely brilliant. This kind of jam, streamed and shared live, is perhaps the vintage... of our time. We are witnessing, in the selfie mode video from Saleem’s phone, a triumph of narcissism. And also a shift in the human disposition towards experience. In another time this would have been pure event. The experience would have been private, known only by presence. The actual music would have decayed inside the recollections of those present. We are now blessed with more access than ever. The spontaneous jam isn’t complete until it has satisfied the algorithmic necessity of being a livestream. The performance must now be quantified by an unseen, dispersed audience. 866, growing rapidly and astonishingly into tens and then hundreds of thousands (remember Ali Sethi’s sessions during Covid?) Looking changes what is looked at. Saleem and the others are performing for the feed. They know in real time this moment is entering a larger field of viewing. They’re watching others watch them in an endless feedback loop of secondary experience. The more we record, the less we risk forgetting. But I wonder if we’re narrowing what we allow ourselves to feel. This is such an incredibly lovely clip, and in its joy let’s also recall what it was like to listen to something unlit by screens, wholly present to each other. What it was like to remember only from what one held within oneself. I wonder if we’ll ever refuse the lens. And let the moment remain singular. Nazar lagi raja tore bangle par in the age of the front facing camera. The kind of clip that makes you briefly forgive the species.show more

Ambarish Satwik

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