It’s not every day that Zubin Mehta manages a visa to get anywhere close to the stratosphere of my everyday business. Having been blessed with tone deaf ears, senseless sensibilities and a philistine attitude to life and strife, I could not care less for ‘orchestra parties’, where they play tunes that strikes only one chord with me: ‘duh uh?’

So as Mehta gets set to bring his Bavarian State Orchestra to Shalimar Garden in Srinagar, what bothers me is not the concert per se. They can play Mehta anywhere in the world for all I care, as long as it is out of my earshot. What gets my goat is the way everyone concerned and unconcerned, barring perhaps the leaves and grass of the renowned garden, are raising the tempo to a disconcerting level to voice their opinion – either in favour or against the orchestra party.

First the government: the authorities have turned Srinagar into a fortress, as reports indicate, in an effort to get the Mumbai-born gentleman play/conduct/what-have-you the orchestra. Why? Because someone in the sarkaar believes it is going to rain peace in the trouble-torn Valley as the violin’s tempo goes up. Don’t the security and police forces have better things to do? Should they not be doing more useful stuff than guard a city, and make life doubly miserable for its residents, so that some people play the violin well for a few other people? And if they have nothing else to do, why couldn’t the security men be given rest for the day? The world knows they deserve it.

Salman Khurshid, India’s extremely smug-sounding external affairs minister, also chipped in (he always does, without fail, whatever the issue may be): "I pray and urge and appeal to all young people that they should pause and listen to his music, listen to what his music has to say and then make up their minds.” Excuse me, but are you joking sir? Loads of gentlemen with some wretched sense of nationalism – and its country cousins sub-nationalism, anti-nationalism, para-nationalism – have made their life miserable, to which Khurshid’s own men and armymen allegedly add dollops of additional misery. Do the people there (or people anywhere in India, busy merely surviving, for that matter) have the time to “pause and listen” to Zubin Mehta’s music, and then additionally decipher what that “music has to say”, before sitting down to “make up their minds”?

Why could the concert not have been held at Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi, which anyway is fortified 365 days a year and then telecast live, like it would be done from Shalimar Garden? Whoever had to listen to the music would then have listened and figured out whatever on earth it is trying to say; and those not interested would have passed their time doing other unnecessary things – like earning the day’s earning, worrying about savings, the property market, kitchen economy, or Poonam Pandey’s reading of the present economic situation.

And if the argument, as the rabid ‘nationalists’ would no doubt shout out, is how and why on earth can a government not hold an orchestra party at any place in the union of India, then the rebut is simpler: hold the darned thing, just don’t give all that wishy-washy garbage about peace and bonhomie and message from music. They are good only in verbose essays.

As for the separatists, who itch to bitch about all things Indian and strike down all things strike-downable, they, too, can follow the same mantra. If you guys don’t want the music, don’t venture anywhere near the park. It’s as simple as that. What’s the point in arguing yourself nuts trying to figure out the politics behind the coattail, sorry music? If you think this is a political gambit, tell you what: you are darned right. And tell you what, there’s no point whining about it or shutting down the city with a bandh. That will only affect the average Srinagar resident. And neither Mehta, nor Khurshid or any of the other alleged demon from Delhi is the average Srinagar resident.