An Award, a Personal Disappointment

Imagine this: Do you invite a guest, who accepts with great difficulty, who leaves important work, commutes an hour and a half, arrives at the function, and then make him walk through a black entrance – because his invite is a black colour – and then sit him on a black chair, in a section marked "black passes," and then switch off the lights and complete the dinginess of the whole episode? Compound this with the bites of mosquitoes as big as flies. Hm. Also imagine: the this guest is an advertiser, a valued customer, an ardent fan of their radio shows, who is the reason for your prosperity, who has an idea, though vague, of how a customer should be treated, also he is a creative guy an aspiring – though pretentious – poet who loves music.

Yes, I mean this in the not too negative sense, this is what happened to this blogger at the awards night he attended yesterday. On reaching there I find that I am holding a black pass, not a gold pass, my invite is a stygian colour, am heralded through a black door, down to a seat done in fashionable black. In front of me is another world altogether, a gold door through which sashay the have-it people in black and colourful dresses, the friends and extended families of the radio people, some of them drop-dead gorgeous in solid black, like a black wall, excluding the likes of poor me, advertiser, blogger, seemingly beaten poet. When I looked ahead what I see is the trendy black backsides of silhouettes standing against a metal enclosure, also black, and I can't see any part of the stage at all. Before me is a barricade shielding me from the glitzy razzmatazz of people in the front, musicians, a poet (in a resplendent multi-coloured dreamcoat jacket) and chairman of the jury, a few movie directors, songwriters, singers, a faded star with only a wan halo around her (she used to be my heartthrob), and behind them stand a motley group who don't have gold passes, but are related to those who have.

The very important people need special seats, I understand. But do they need to be cordoned and barricaded from the rest of us? Especially when most of the seats meant for them were vacant one hour after the program started. I guess, therefore, the tardy get encouraged to be even tardier.

Hm.

Why the barricade? I ask my colleague. Are they creating a new class of people who are, sort of, grudgingly invited? I note through the camera panning wildly that most of the seats in the gold enclosure are vacant. Still waiting? So, the idea is even if those seats are vacant the barricaded, "black pass," lower caste of people (i.e. yours truly) shouldn't occupy it. There are hefty beefcakes guarding the only entry. Then why were we invited, walked through the black door, given black passes, only to suffer mosquito bites in the dark area meant for the lower-than-the chosen people (several guys had brought their wives also, I could imagine their embarrassment) along with what looked like ad agency guys and advertisers. Or, were we graded according to the volume of advertising we gave the radio channel, which wasn't a meager amount, by any reckoning. After all, I was the one who recommended the radio to my higher-ups.

Ugh!

On the whole an event that left me a bit disappointed, a tad too much introspective. Needless to add, I walked out an hour after the proceedings began, chastened, I might add.