Celebrity Column: Faces, writes Ayushmann Khurrana

My Dubai concert ended in a frenzy with my sibling Aparshakti going berserk with me on stage. You can see the madness on my social media accounts. This was the first time he joined me for my gig. It was one of my best gigs with great support from the crowd. The zest was different as it was my first foreign trip with my band, AyushmannBhava, post the successes of Bareilly Ki Barfi and Shubh Mangal Ssaavdhan. I added new songs to my regular set list and added a new weird habit of noticing people’s faces, especially while performing. The Middle East, which has intrigued me since time immemorial, this time made me notice how similar 

Arabs look to North Indians. Some of them could easily pass off as a Kukreja or a Makhija. This was also my first trip to Oman, and I really liked the vibe of that place. The Arabs of Oman are more desi-friendly. The country is more approachable. It has great natural beauty. The city of Salalah is a quaint, green hill station in the middle of the Middle East. Sigh. Hill station in the Middle East is too oxymoronic. 

Talking about the faces, which I generally notice in the crowd when I’m on stage is bizarre. I look at certain people (irrespective of gender) and there’s this amazing connect with them while I’m singing. Their eyes form a lovely crescent, which organically emanates out of a 30 per cent smile. The most genuine smile. The performer-audience connect. It’s like two souls giving silent high fives to each other. Observing a crowd is so different from observing two specific different faces. If there are two different faces side-by-side, your eye is struck by everything that makes one different from the other. But if you have 2,000 faces side-by-side, you suddenly realise that it’s all just one face in many variations and no such thing as an individual ever existed. 

While noticing the faces you also gauge what the other person is thinking. Do people really think? About politics, world issues, social problems, or they’ve just come for the concert to see a Bollywood actor sing? Is it just Paani Da Rang (booze and beach) or beyond that? Is it Mitti Di Khushbu (love and concern for the place of belonging)? Both are my songs but can be interpreted in multiple and opposite ways. 

I notice people walking in late for the concert and smiling at me and also looking for their seats at the same time, making them the perfect multitaskers of that moment. But do they also zone out during the two-hour concert? And what do they think about when they zone out? The endeavour of every performer is to evade that audience member’s or individual’s zone out moment. The performer is a pleaser.

But the crowd is selfish at times, they yearn for a selfie or a social media post which gives them attention. And when they come for selfies in a mob, they don’t notice that they at times push women and children in the course. Consideration for other people is not seen in a mob. The more people are indifferent to the interests of others, the more obsessed they become with their own faces. This is what you call the individualism of our era.

“You know me by my face, you know me as a face and you never knew me any other way. Therefore it could never occur to you that my face is not my self.” — Milan Kundera