Fortunate are those who are able to identify their life purpose and true calling, and have the desire and courage to pursue it. “This is what I love to do, and this is what I will excel at in life.” For most others, living comes in the way of life.
Back in 1998 when I was in second year of college, my band Krossbreedz made its second attempt to qualify for the ‘Countdown to Ecstasy’ rock competition at IIT Delhi’s annual cultural festival, Rendezvous. The qualification process involved playing a set of 2-3 songs for an audience that comprised of the other competing bands, and the judges that were usually members of more senior bands. That year it was Anirban (vocalist, Orange Street), Vishal (vocalist, Pentagram) and I do not remember who the third judge was. A lot of bands that could not qualify actually comprised of very good individual musicians who did not sound good as a band. Krossbreedz song list that night included Stairway to Heaven, Thunderstruck and a self composition Insecticide. We were lucky (read prepared) enough to qualify for the finals for the first time that year.
Yasmin the Drummeress banging them skins
This blog post, however, is not about Krossbreedz. Rather it is about Yasmin Claire Kazi, the singer of the Bangalore based band, Angel Dust, which was one of the bands trying to qualify for the coveted finals that night. I vaguely remember their rendition of Black Velvet. After our performance was over, Yasmin, a cheerful, confident and charismatic girl, came to congratulate us for the wonderful show. She said she thought we would qualify, and as we later learnt that morning, we indeed did. We had some good interactions – she told us she had moved to India from the UK, and that I reminded her of her brother (boy, that must have been embarrassing) who was studying in Russia. That was the first and the only occasion I interacted with this girl. She must have certainly left an impression on me given the fact I am writing about her sixteen years later.
Fast forward to today’s digital world of You Tube and Facebook. I had forgotten her name but just remembered the name of her band. Curious as to what the band had been up to, I looked them up on Google to come across a lot of You Tube videos which also reminded me what her name was. I searched for that name on Facebook to see that she is FB friends with Dean and Rahul, Krossbreedz vocalist and drummer respectively, back in the day. Yasmin however has come a long way in the sixteen years I had no contact with her (which, by the way, I still don’t). She transformed from a vocalist to a respected metal drummer (MyndSnare), joined and left various bands (Serotura being one), and seems to have found her true calling – playing drums! She was also invited to give a TED talk and she has posted her speech on her FB page, which really captures the essence of her transformation, and wonderfully illustrates that there is no short cut to success.
She calls herself the drummeress and hers is a very inspiring story for me.