Review: The Extraordinary Life of Max Bulandi by Sidharth Singh
A story about Indian scenesters and musicians of different generations, The Extraordinary Life of Max Bulandi by Sidharth Singh goes back into the previous century and to the pioneers of the Indian rock scene
As the novel begins, we find the protagonist, Nirvana, waking up on a Sunday afternoon, nursing a hangover from a three-day binge. He’s in his single room apartment in Chuim Village, a Catholic settlement in Khar. The events of the weekend come to him in flashes: the launch of a designer store, an after-party on a Worli terrace, a rum-soaked brunch at Sea Princess, and an altercation at Janta bar in Pali Naka, Bandra.
He rummages through “an overflowing ashtray for last night’s half-smoked spliff, finally locating it within the folds of the bedsheet, which now has a large hot rock burnt through it. Said hot rock has also penetrated the surface of the mouldy mattress underneath.” He locates the lighter in his shoe. This downbeat opening sets the tone for an unusual tale of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, which takes Nirvana, a ’90s kid, on a cross-country search (Bombay, Calcutta, Shillong and Benares) for a 1970s band called The Flow, and it’s enigmatic self-destructive frontman, Max Bulandi.
Along the way, it becomes a story about Indian scenesters and musicians of different generations: the late ’60s, the ’70s and the ’90s, up until 2019, the year in which the novel is set. The focus is on the burgeoning scene in Park Street, Calcutta, between 1970-5, a time of political turbulence. It’s a carefully structured (and researched) novel, which begins in contemporary times and travels back to the previous century in concentric circles, whirl within musical whirl, until it reaches the very core of the pioneers of the Indian rock scene.
Nirvana, pushing 40, is a disillusioned acid-tripping journalist with a tabloid called Mumbai Tasveer. He chances upon an article in an old issue of Junior Standard (a fictionalised version of the legendary Junior Statesman), about an anarchic gig that took place in Dadar in 1970, featuring bands from around the country. The audience wore bell-bottomed pants and tie-dye t-shirts: “Though one could have easily mistaken them for a bunch of hippies from Haight-Ashbury, they were, in fact, regular college-going students from the so-called ‘good families’ that all of us belong to.”
Reading the piece, Nirvana wonders, “What it must have been like for a misfit like Max Bulandi in the India of the ’70s. A man living in conflict with his time, trying to express himself through art but unable to communicate with the society around him. So many of his generation perished unrecognized, languishing in poverty. But those unsung heroes paved the way for us. Their revolt against the old order created the necessary social churn for something new to emerge.”
After wrangling a month of paid leave, Nirvana sets out on his journey, tracking down the remaining band members and musicians who knew them, the reporter who wrote the JS piece on India Beat ’70, and Belinda, Max’s girlfriend, who hails from British nobility, unearthing their fascinating back-stories, which are told in their own voice. Some are dead, some have become alcoholics, while others have accepted the inevitable fading of rock ‘n’ roll dreams and slipped quietly into the bourgeois life.
The journey takes us to the heart of the jazz scene in Park Street, Calcutta: Trincas, Blue Fox, Skyroom, Moulin Rouge; the Anglo-Indian influence; the strikes, unionising and labour struggle of the revolutionary Naxalite era, which swallows whole Max Bulandi aka Makrand from Benares (musicians don’t exist in a vacuum); the Bauls of Bolpur; the missionaries, planters, and “tea-bands” of Shillong: “Let me tell you about that wonderful instrument my old man had fashioned out of an empty tea-chest, a broom stick and a length of cord.”
Vikram Baxi, musician and school teacher, ticks off milestones in his hedonistic voyage, using historical markers, “I smoked my first cigarette during the Chinese incursion of ’62, my first drink was had during the war of ’65 with Pakistan, my first hit of heroin arrived with the liberation of Bangladesh in ’71 and my first stint in rehab was during the Emergency of ’75 – where they gave me electro-convulsive therapy, which seems to have f****d my head for good.”
At a Communist rally in a Calcutta maidan, Joe Nongrem, former member of The Flow observes, “Beneath the surface ran a strong undercurrent of sexuality. This was not just a place to complain about the inequalities of society; it was also a place to find potential partners.”
Along the way, the book becomes a potted history of the hippie trail: Dam Square in Amsterdam; Tehran: “There were girls in short skirts. Amir Kabir, in the heart of the city, was the traveller ghetto of Tehran”; Kabul: “All the cafes and hash dens that were frequented by Western travellers stood on Chicken Street or Flower Street next door”; Bombay: the opium dens of Shuklaji Street near Colaba Causeway; and the end of the trail, Kathmandu – with “its government-run hash shops” – “Kathmandu was to the East, what Amsterdam was to the West – the capital of bohemia.”
Then, there is the ’90s kid angle. Anyone who is a part of that generation will experience a wave of recognition: going to watch Parikrama and Indian Ocean; the ten-rupee pudiyas Delhi University students bought from the slums of Mall Road; the ‘Cyber Mehfils’ of MIDIval Punditz in the noughties; cult haunts like Fire ‘n’ Ice and Blue Frog in Mumbai and Fireball in then still-developing Gurgaon.
This is that rare novel, full of twists and turns, readable and relatable, an authentic wild ride, not marred by the phoniness and artificiality, which often plagues Indian literary fiction. Sidharth Singh has a story to tell, and he tells it like a rockstar.
Palash Krishna Mehrotra is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth, and former Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone.
