Sands of time

“What are you doing here?” I asked (at that time) a bunch of three O level kids sitting quietly on the couch in Gumby’s music room at a friend’s teaching institute. One of them, Farabi, put his finger on his lips to motion for silence and pointed to something in front of him. I looked in the same direction and found Ali Hamza from Noori on the farther end of the room quietly practicing his bass guitar. This was just before Noori went in to record their second album, Peeli Patti Aur Raja Jani Ki Gol Dunya.

I walked up to Hamza and asked him what those three were doing there? He smiled and said, “They asked if they could watch, I said sure”. I couldn’t help but feel slightly amused, these children would come quite often after their classes were over and would just quietly watch Hamza practice – they wanted nothing more. A part of me thought perhaps they kept imagining themselves in Hamza’s place.

Several years later, they ended up coming on the mainstream media with their band, Raeth. Their first single, Bhula Do was catchy and propelled them into music stars almost overnight followed by their own concerts, tours in India, their own fan following and what not. Everything seemed to be going well, until one of their members, Mustafa, left the band and expressed his frustrations in an interview to the press (Images, September 30^th, 2007) stating something along the lines of “The band has obviously broken up after my exit. What people see now is Wajhi and Farabi’s part of Raeth. I have nothing more to do with it. I backed out after making some melodies on the second album. To be honest, I just couldn’t bear the fact that I was being overshadowed.” From what I had heard, all hell had broken lose with the band refusing to speak to the writer who had done the story to an increase in their differences with Mustafa himself.

Although, it seemed as if the band had fizzled out after this fling with controversy (the flip side of fame if you may), word has it that they’re back in the studio recording their second album; I bumped into at a local recording studio where they’re recording their album and he mentioned how that interview did pose difficulties for them as it tainted their image. One could see that he still felt the sting of receiving negative publicity. However, he added that instead of feeling bitter about it, it forced the band to reflect upon their approach and to work harder on their music – in a way to prove that they can rise above such pettiness and show the world that they deserve to be where they are. With the album still in process, one hopes that when it comes out, that will exactly be the case.