Almost every first-hand experience from AR Rahman's recently concluded Marakkuma Nenjam concert seems to be packed with fear, anxiety, frustration, and inconsolable disappointment. While AR Rahman and the event organisers (ACTC Events) have addressed the mishap in passing, we reached out to the people who attended the event to make sense of what seems to be a case of monumental blunder.
While some concert audience theorized how the late-comers could have aggravated the crowd pile-up, 26 year-old Civil Service aspirant Revanthi says that was hardly the case. "Even as early as 6pm, the Gold stand was almost full. There was no space even between the chairs, I couldn’t even hold my hand out in front or even move my chair even a bit. It was claustrophobic. If you had an emergency you couldn’t go out. At the entry points there were a lot of people standing so you couldn’t get out even if you wanted to." A frustrated Revanthi then shares how the crowd was not the only thing that contributed to the bad experience. "While the crowd management was one issue, the concert itself was poorly set up. Even at our stand we couldn’t hear a thing. It looked like the sound was only coming from the stage. The number of speakers were not enough for the venue. So we couldn’t even enjoy the performance. We started leaving by 9:45 pm itself because we were anxious that we might have to face a stampede at the end," she says.
Shree N, a 20-year old student from MOP Vaishnav College for Women, recounts how she only realised the extent of the physical damage she endured after she went back home. "The crowd was so unbearably packed that I couldn’t even see the floor. Only after I got home and changed my dress did I realise I had a lot of scratch marks on myself. I couldn’t even feel it at the concert. A lot of the people stepped on my foot, crushed my toes and now the doctor has advised me to get a scan." She further shares, "We could see that a lot of the people inside the stands didn’t even have any entry tags. Some people were still wearing entry tags from the previous concert that was cancelled. I know people who worked on the camera crew and even they couldn’t get a proper parking spot. A lot of them were drinking and smoking inside the venue. The event volunteers were young, college going people and most of them had left home by 8:30 pm."
A musician named Aditya Kamakshinadha recalled how he was worried for the safety of his 59-year old mother. "My mom was super excited. We reached at 6:00 pm and the parking space, which was a kilometer away from the venue, delayed us by another hour. We knew there would be a huge crowd but this was unexpected. It was very clear that they oversold the tickets. We booked Gold tickets worth 2000 and we had to collect the entry tags at the EA mall. We didn’t want to be late so we even went to the mall to get the tags beforehand and we still got overwhelmed by the crowd. At the venue, my mom had to use the washroom stalls and we couldn’t even find it. There were no sign boards or people to direct us. When we finally managed to find it, there was complete chaos near the washroom stalls. The lighting at the venue was poor as well. I saw a snake and a cow roaming about. We could see people standing on top of the backup generators and on the transformers. It all looked so unsafe. We listened to only 1 and a half songs before deciding to come out because the experience was horrible."
An IT employee named Sreenivas says, “I booked 20 Gold tickets for the first concert but I couldn’t go for the rescheduled concert so I sold most of my tickets and gave away four to my friends. I heard that they started selling Gold phase-2 tickets even as late as a week before the concert. Even on the day of the concert I could see people on Twitter complaining about how they hadn’t received the QR codes for the tickets yet." He then added, "I personally don’t think AR Rahman should be held accountable for this. It is his job to entertain people not manage them. If he could handle all this crowd then he might as well start his own event management company. However, the organisers should be held responsible for this. This was their job, their mess.”
A college student who volunteered at the concert, under the condition of anonymity, says, "I learned about this volunteering opportunity from my college and it was a paid gig. I only learnt about the chaos at the concert after I came back home. I was working at the food and beverage stand but after a while, since we didn’t have much work, we were allowed to stand in the volunteers zone between the VIP and Diamond stand. It was well staffed as far as I could tell. My only complaint was that the lineup of songs weren’t really that good, the audio and lighting weren’t good either. The mobile washrooms near my stand had a way around which you could easily move between the stands. So I guess some people could have used that way to cross the stands. Even though we got paid the very next day, if I was being honest, ACTC could have done a better job."
Whether it is a case of poor planning, insufficient volunteers, reckless crowd management, or overselling, the Marakkuma Nenjam concert has left behind a trail of traumatic events of wildly different shades, ranging from physical wounds to emotional scars, to full-blown panic attacks. While an apology or a refund could hardly undo a trauma, the best we could hope for now is that the celebrities who command large crowds and their event organisers will dissect this recent mishap to learn what they could, so they don't repeat it in the future.