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‘Three lakh!’ Bala flipped during the concert steering committee meeting. Yes,
one of the great value additions from Bala is to make everything sound important.
He created the CSC, or the Concert Steering Committee. It sounded so important,
I could almost put it in my resume.
But right now, we had a problem. Everyone kept silent as the person in charge
of the singers gave her report. ‘You want three celebrity singers, sir,’ said
Madhavi, a fat agent with spectacles who looked like a cross between a school
prefect and an ICU nurse.
‘But how can they get paid so much?’ Bala said. Somehow, Bala felt only he
deserved a job that paid far in excess of the work involved.
‘They come with a band, sir, and back-up singers,’ Madhavi said.
Everyone in the room nodded.
Bala shook his head. ‘Why do we need back-up singers? The main ones will
crash or something?’
Nobody laughed.
‘Back-up means chorus, sir,’ Madhavi said.
Bala remained unimpressed.
‘Chorus are those people who say aa aa aa in love songs, sir,’ said Renuka,
another agent.
‘I know what chorus is,’ Bala said as he banged his fist on the table. ‘But this
is too much.’
‘We can cut the food,’ said one agent. He got more dirty looks than an eve-
teaser in a bus. He retracted his suggestion.
‘Why don’t we get some lesser known singers?’ I asked.
‘But this is a Citibank event. If we get B-grade singers and tomorrow HSBC
does an event with A-grade singers, we are screwed,’ Bala said.
‘Sir, the venue....’ One agent who had never spoken in a meeting in his entire
career was shot down in mid-sentence.