(Material) Treasures of the Heart
- Arpana Gvalani
- Jun 18
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 29
A recent bout of decluttering unearthed three relics from a shelf I hadn't visited in years.
A cassette.
A CD.
A DVD.
None of them are particularly valuable. In fact, finding a device to play them today might be harder than finding the media itself.
Yet I couldn't let them go.
The first was a cassette of Kya Hai Yeh Jaadu by Vedic Chant.
The second, the soundtrack CD of the film Turning 30.
The third, a DVD of Bombay Boys.
At first glance, they seem unrelated.
But then again, so do most friendships when viewed from a distance.
Long before Vedic Chant, there was Chaos.
Sid and Suhaas were neighbourhood friends from Bandra. We all grew up around the same area, though our paths crossed more closely during the college years. I was in Jai Hind College. Sid was in the Science section. Suhaas somehow seemed to be everywhere in college despite not actually being a student there. I only discovered that little detail years later.
Back then, Bombay's music scene revolved around college festivals, rehearsal rooms, borrowed equipment and endless enthusiasm. Venues like Razz Rhino were destinations. Musicians and friends were each other's groupies. If someone had a gig, everyone showed up.
One challenge for bands in those days was rehearsal space. Another was drum kits.
My brother Anit played drums in a band called Cusp and was one of the few drummers in Bandra who owned a full drum kit. He happily opened our home to friends who needed a place to rehearse.
Which is how bands, musicians and assorted dreamers began passing through our front door.
The first time Sid and Suhaas came over, they rang the bell and were greeted by the furious barking of our first dog, a feisty little Lhasa Apso named Amie.
From outside the door, the boys shouted for someone to hold the dog.
The barking sounded enormous.
The imagination probably supplied a Doberman.
When the door opened and they discovered a tiny Lhasa Apso staring back at them, everybody burst out laughing.
Amie, meanwhile, adored boys and was probably delighted to have visitors.
Years later, I learned more about the band's journey.
Chaos eventually evolved into Vedic Chant when new members joined and the band's musical direction began to shift. Influences ranged from Queen and The Beatles to Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. They experimented with Hindi lyrics, Sanskrit shlokas, electronic loops and rock music at a time when very few bands were attempting that combination.
According to Suhaas, they were among the earliest bands in India using sequencers live on stage, triggering electronic loops and performing over them. Audiences initially didn't know what to make of it.
They even got booed.
Which, in hindsight, feels like a badge of honour.
One of their earliest gigs as Vedic Chant was at Ponda Engineering College in Goa, sharing a bill with Pentagram and Greek. The organisers apparently got drunk, climbed onto the stage and demanded Pink Floyd songs.
Some stories improve with age.
The Turning 30 soundtrack represents another chapter.
The same friends who once rehearsed in living rooms fuelled by chai and youthful optimism had moved into film music. The stage had changed. The equipment had changed. Life had changed.
The creative impulse remained.
When I look at the Vedic Chant cassette and the Turning 30 CD side by side, I don't see two pieces of media.
I see a journey.
Then there is Bombay Boys.
This DVD carries a different kind of memory.
When the film released, I was studying in Australia. Long before anyone coined the term FOMO, I was experiencing it.
Friends back home were watching the film, talking about it, celebrating it and living through that moment together.
I was thousands of kilometres away.
Years later, the DVD became my way of reconnecting with that slice of Bombay.
It also carries memories of friends from Bandra, including Karl, and a brief appearance by my dear friend Kushal Punjabi, who passed away in 2019.
Watching the film now feels less like revisiting a movie and more like revisiting a neighbourhood. (YouTube only seems to have the Hindi-dubbed version. Watching Naveen Andrews lip-sync in Hindi is an experience I wasn't prepared for. Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.)
Years later, in 2009, I opened Gostana in Bandra.
Somewhere along the way, the boys who once came over to borrow my brother's drum kit became regulars at the café.
What began as "Anit's sister's place" became "Arpi's place" to old friends like Sid and Suhaas.
As Gostana grew, so did the circle around it. Musicians became customers. Customers became performers. Performers became open mic hosts, advisers, collaborators and friends.
The café developed its own little village.
Apple, Zizou and Chickoo were part of it.
So were countless musicians, artists and dreamers who wandered through its doors over the years.
Through Sid, I found myself curating music for the Kala Ghoda Festival for four wonderful years. Looking back, it feels less like a series of opportunities and more like a chain of friendships stretching across decades.
In 2019, Gostana closed its doors.
The cassette remained.
The CD remained.
The DVD remained.
But what they really held was never music or movies.
They held people.
And perhaps that is why they survived every clean-up, every move and every attempt at decluttering.
Some treasures live on shelves.
The best ones continue to live in our hearts.
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