For some people it was a lonely Valentine’s Day. And this goes out especially to them.

When we played in Pune last year we decided we weren’t going back without cake and cookies from the famous German Bakery. Enjoying them in Bangalore the next day, we didn’t foresee having to reflect on that simple pleasure like this.

Terror could have struck then as it did on the night of February 13, 2010. But we lived to write this. And we shall make the most of the life and joy granted to us.

It is somewhat edifying that we were able to reach out to Pune on February 14. Opus Pune webcast the One Small Love concert live to its patrons.

Thank you for turning up (and turning down your other Valentine’s Day engagements) and for your support and encouragement right through this initiative.

Foremost, our thanks go to the fabulous folks at Trumpit and Opus – Carlton, Shonali, Priyanka, Venkat, Adrian and all the staff whose names fail us but whose smiling faces fill our minds when we recollect that lovely evening. Thank you for event support, your gracious hospitality and for making our artists and guests feel at home at Opus in the Creek, such a tranquil setting with its giant Buddha and tippling fish.

Thank you Konarak Reddy, Gerard Machado, Ravichandra Kulur, Alwyn Fernandes, Gaurav Vaz and Karan Joseph for your soul-stirring performances. A special thanks to Vasu, Varun, Jishnu, Montry, Pavan and Sanjeev, the awesome musicians of Swarathma, for playing a pulse-quickening show. In a market where live performances can hardly pay the bills, these wonderful people unquestioningly played for love.

For making the One Small Love concert a resounding success we thank Niranjan, the man at the soundboard whose admirable patience with the tantrums of rock stars is legend.

Thanks to Saswati Chakravarty, C K Meena, Prakash Belawadi and Harish Bijoor for articulating their special messages to our audience because rock stars (with the notable exception of Gaurav Vaz) are so pathetic at making speeches.

For his time-saving and completely impromptu comic interlude, a whopper of a thank-you goes out to our friendly neighbourhood Bollywood star-in-the-making Rajeev Ravindranathan.

Thanks to Merwyn Rodrigues of JumpMedia, Dubai, who accepted a brief that few designers would, and delivered a poster and profile image for our Facebook page in just a few hours.

We thank Smita and the very talented and even-tempered folks at Kieon for online support and web design.

Thanks to Kartik Iyer, Praveen Das and the beautiful minds at Happy Creative Services for dreaming up the original One Small Love music video. Special thanks also to Ashvin Naidu of Avakkai Films.

Thank you, PG Santhosh and his colleagues at MIPL-GraphicsAllAround, for the One Small Love giveaway stickers and for the big yellow smiley that graced the stage throughout the show.

Thank you, Gaurav Manchanda, for being Ayrton Senna to our guests when the cab guys ditched us at the eleventh hour.

We thank Dean Umesh PN, professors Srijayanth and Ananth and research fellow Bindu of the TAAQ Roadie Institute of Technology (RIT) for running the show like a smoothie, and especially for committing themselves to the odious task of filming people drawing smileys under hot lights.

We are immensely grateful to Facebook and WordPress for their fabulous (and free) online products, which make social messaging and online publishing look ridiculously easy. Ten years ago, we would have struggled to drum up opt-in support for an event like this. This year, we didn’t phone a single journalist.

In the same breath, we thank Facebook evangelists such as Martin D’Souza for spreading the message of One Small Love to their networks. Thanks also to the 1,300+ fans of the One Small Love page for your endorsement of this movement. You have a lot to look forward to.

We have had many managers and we love and respect all of them. But no one merits a bigger ovation than Divya Joseph, who deserves a lifetime royalty from Adidas for living the slogan ‘Impossible is Nothing’. The list of things she deserves to be thanked for cannot be accommodated here, so let just it be said that she was the smile on the face of One Small Love.

Thanks to Velu Shankar, a long-time friend, philosopher and guide of Thermal And A Quarter, for his advice and encouragement.

One Small Love begins at home. Our families deserve our utmost love and gratitude for their support and suffering in the face of our absences, late nights and many missed dinners. Since this suffering, and our solicitations for support, are not about to stop in the near future, we thank you in advance.

The show must go on, no matter what threats loom up to stop us. And we will do everything in our power as musicians and artists to fight violence and hate with messages of love, tolerance and freedom. To paraphrase Harry Belafonte: “You can cage the singer but not the song.”

The concert is only the beginning. In the future that is about to unfold, One Small Love will reach out to the world in many ways and touch many lives.

Let’s draw the line each day.

The post One Big Thankyou appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

“But we’ll save that for tomorrow,” he says on his 33rd.

Every day should be a happy birthday for love. As artists, that should be the mission fuelling our activism — to spread the message of love and peace in the world to everyone, to bring estranged people together, to shape the change that lies trapped inside our hearts. And not lose ourselves in cynicism.

If need be, we must cross one line to draw another.

Last year, Bruce wrote the lyrics of ‘One Small Love’ and put it to music with his band, Thermal And A Quarter. Join him and Thermal And A Quarter with other artists, speakers and thinkers on the song’s first anniversary.

‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore’, an assertion of liberty, love and happiness, celebrates the birthday of love.

Feb 14, Opus in the Creek, Whitefield Road, Bangalore.

Be there to draw the line. And spread the love.

The post One Small Love – Bruce Lee Mani draws the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Ravi’s flute has taken him around the world — New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Festival Hall, the Passionskirche in Berlin, Mumbai’s NCPA Auditorium, etc. He has shared the stage with Dr M. Balamuralikrishna, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar, Steve Smith and Vital Information, Charlie Mariano, Hariharan, S P Balasubramaniam, Kumaresh and Ganesh, Tarun Bhattacharya, Hans Hartmann, Karsh Kale, Amit Heri and Tanmoy Bose.

Join Ravi as he performs with Thermal And A Quarter and other musicians at ‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore’, a convention of peace-loving citizens, at Opus in the Creek in Bangalore on February 14. Entry is free.

Draw the line. Spread the love.

The post One Small Love – Ravichandra Kulur draws the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Writer and cartoonist Bijoy Venugopal believes that anger makes protests look ugly and diverts attention from their core cause. People often feel that to protest, they must shout slogans, burn effigies or blacken the faces of suspected villains. As artists and writers, we must find unique expression for our protest. We must stretch our imagination to channel righteous anger into thought-provoking and enduring art that adds meaning and lends perspective to protest.

Join Bijoy and other Bangaloreans at ‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore’, a celebration of creative freedom and artistic independence with musicians and opinion leaders. Be there at Opus in the Creek, Whitefield Road, Bangalore on February 14, 2010.

Draw the line. Spread the love.

The post One Small Love – Bijoy Venugopal draws the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

“People smile for the camera, but I wish they would just smile otherwise,” says Zubair, a Bangalore-based photographer.

Join him and other concerned Bangaloreans at ‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore’, a celebration of diversity and freedom with performances by Thermal And A Quarter, Swarathma, Gerard Machado, Konarak Reddy, Alwyn Fernandes, Karan Joseph, Ravi Kulur and other artists and opinion leaders on February 14 at Opus in the Creek, Whitefield Road, Bangalore.

Draw the line. Spread the love.

The post One Small Love – Syed Zubair draws the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

His mantra: Live and let live. Be free. Let music help you share and give.

Join him and other musicians, artists and concerned citizens at ‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore’ on Feb 14 at Opus in the Creek, Bangalore to respect and celebrate the differences that make us unique and interesting to each other.

Draw the line. Spread the love.

The post One Small Love – Alwyn Fernandes draws the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Vasu Dixit and Varun Murali invoke Sant Kabir in one of their songs to explain that nothing has changed in the last five hundred years when it comes to womens empowerment. On the one hand we tout the power of freedom and yet, on the other, the same people misuse freedom for their own interests.

Join them and other artists, musicians and concerned citizens at ‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore’ on Feb 14 in Bangalore to celebrate the spirit of freedom. If you are not in Bangalore, join us on Facebook.

Draw the line. Spread the love.

The post One Small Love – Vasu Dixit and Varun Murali draw the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

“I’m not a Mangalorean but I love their food, and I’m not a Bangalorean but I live here,” he says. What is this about cities, anyway? Whose fault was it that India was organized into states on the basis of language? And why do we get so parochial over who is allowed to inhabit and work in our cities?

Questions that point to one simple answer: One Small Line. That’s all you need to draw to live in harmony in a tired world.

Join Rajeev and others like him at ‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore‘, a concert that stresses the notion of one love, one world.

Draw the line. Spread the love.

The post One Small Love – Rajeev Ravindranathan draws the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

That’s the view expressed by Martin D’Souza, an artist and advertising professional who has called Bangalore home for 24 years.

Join Martin and other concerned Bangaloreans as they come together for ‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore’, a celebration of the spirit of freedom and tolerance with music, food and free speech. Musicians Konarak Reddy, Allwyn Fernandes, Gaurav Vaz, Ravi Kulur, Gerard Machado, Karan Joseph and Swarathma will join Thermal And A Quarter at the concert on Feb 14, 2010 at Opus in the Creek, Whitefield Road, Bangalore.

Draw the line. Spread the love.

Attend the concert on February 14. Entry is free.

The post One Small Love – Martin D'Souza draws the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Most TAAQ insiders and many outsiders know that Happy Creative Services, the hot little Bangalore thinkshop run by Praveen Das and Kartik Iyer (yes, he of The Higher Iyer Show), was instrumental in putting that big horrid insect (mercifully quite dead) on the cover of This Is It. While we had our suspicions that it was a visual that they hurriedly adapted from a sunk pitch for Mortein, all was forgiven when we actually saw the men at work taking macro shots, hunched over a roach that had been very lovingly put to eternal sleep.

This time last year was really busy for us. Java Jazz was on the horizon and we were busy trying to take the next plane out without having to pay our own way. The Mangalore pub incident evoked a strong response from various quarters – the Pink Chaddi Campaign being the most celebrated of them. When NDTV’s Barkha Dutt hurriedly convened a ‘We The People’ in Bangalore on Feb 14, we were invited to be onlookers as a lot of Bangalore’s hottest (under the collar) and coolest (by glam sunglass quotient) gathered to thrash out the issue. It was here that we performed the first bars of One Small Love publicly for the first time.

Happy tried our patience when we were more preoccupied with getting our airline tickets and accommodation at Jakarta sorted out with the festival organisers. In the middle of all that, they shot a video, got it edited and sent it up into the free (if somewhat firewalled) world.

One Small Love was born. On Happy’s blog, the lads wrote:

TAAQ appeared on a talk show on NDTV where they hummed a few lines from the song (The show was hosted by Barkha Dutt, and was in connection with the Mangalore incident). TAAQ set off to Jakarta after seeing the first cut. After 10 years of penning down some brilliant songs, here they were – running out of words to express their joy. Their way of approval was a big, happy smile…

For Happy, it was the first music video produced in-house. The excitement was palpable. The whole team celebrated with the customary Old Monk (One small gulp is all it takes in a tired world)…

Read the entire account here along with a nice photo-story.

The post The 'Happy' story behind One Small Love appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).