Late 80s in a small town of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh.
Pop music here was called "English Music" and Jackson was its highlight. Even those who did not ever hear his music, knew about someone called "Jaiksan" somewhere in America. They also knew that he could dance - almost like Mithun Chakraborty - who then was the larger than life Disco Dancer of the silver screen.
MJ's new album "BAD" was a great rage among us - school boys then. Though we could only understand "I'm Bad, I'm Bad" in the whole song and religiously sang along whenever the phrase came up, it was his moonwalking we swore by. Practicing the smooth backward slide of the feet on dusty school grounds ruined our nice and dandy Bata shoes- but nothing stopped us.
Around the launch of this album, an English magazine "Sun" announced to release a four-part doorsize poster of MJ in his black dress with hooks and trappings, an image which was featured on the BAD album cover.
Now Sun was not a magazine which school boys could pick every now and then . Also the publishers being intelligent publishers released a part of the poster every month starting from his shoes. The wait for the next edition was unbearable.
Because it was summer holidays, my father bought my eldest brother, who obviously had better Jackson-gyaan than I, an edition of Sun, which carried the first part of the poster - the King of Pop's shoes.
A month later, my brother also managed to get the second edition of the magazine and we could create MJ upto his waist. Many a days, I would imagine where I would put up that poster. When nobody was around, I would try pasting the two portions of the poster to see how the whole picture was shaping up.
But as life would have it, we could never get the next two editions of Sun.
Was it Dad's anger over grades (his not mine as I scored decently) or something happened that we could not go to the lone bookstore in town, I was left with half the Moonwalker. Despite this, I preserved the two parts of the poster for more than a year, praying that I might get two more editions of the Sun to complete the picture.
MJ went up to give us more hit numbers and we grew up to sing along with his songs -verbatim.
Today he is dead, in a twist of fate, leaving an unsung concert- just like my incomplete poster of half the moonwalker.
8 comments:
:) bahut achhe.... lekin aap to english school me hone ki vajah se jaikisan ko jaante the, hame to uska J bhi nahi pataa tha un dino.. for the first time after coming to germany i learned frm my husband that what was actually his importance.. achha artical hai dost..
Your story is as sad as mine... i had promised myself i'll attend atleast one of his concert in life... and now 'm only left with a few tv channels dedicating the weekend to MJ's best.. its like end of an era..
It was a good connect. Also u managed to recollect all that after so many years.
Hey that pic... I had bought one too.. from the streets. Its so true.. the craze.. it was really a huge craze. Did not know what we were singing.. but we still went on and on... your article was a real good read..
I got introduced to MJ by a neighbourhood 'bhaiya' who had pasted a big BAD poster in his small room. I always thought bhaiya was into things not normal. :) To me he was a great dancer (seriously, since I have never cared for anything more than hindi films, when it comes to music). And, I came to know how big a celebrity this guy was when he came to India in '96 - me and my brother tracked all news articles mentioning fine details like he would always take his sound and light system and dancers with him in his private plane wherever he went around the world! (dont know if that was true though). RIP MJ!
Very nice!
Really good ending...
great piece. full of nostalgia. i like it...look forward to more posts...
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