When writer Akshay Ahuja transported a guitar to India, little did he know he was being led down a rabbit hole to a vibrant subculture by a group that styled itself the Cremated Souls. From Guernica:
It was near midnight on the eve of India’s independence, and I was at a concert called Freedom Jam, held at a club on the outskirts of Bangalore called only The Club. Watching the band perform from beside the stage, I noticed a girl with a nose ring. My grandmother’s nose was pierced when she married at thirteen; her nose ring was a sign that she adhered to a certain traditional image of Indian womanhood. For this girl, however, the ring indicated that she was not just westernized (such girls simply chose not to get their noses pierced) but a member of an alternative community that existed outside the mainstream of westernized Indian youth.
Essentially, the nose ring had traveled to the other side of the world, assumed a fringe rather than traditional meaning, and then come back to India, where it now has two different meanings. Such dual gestures exist in America, but they usually have one sincere and one ironic meaning-trucker hats on truckers, for example, as opposed to everyone else. In India, however, both meanings are perfectly sincere, both carry conviction.
Our group had left late for the show, stopping at a store on the side of the highway for a few bottles of whiskey. When we finally pushed through the turnstiles and found the promoter, all they could get was the 4 a.m. slot.
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