After months of speculation, there is finally confirmation: popular British alternative rock band Coldplay will indeed play a gig in Mumbai in November.
The news, first reported by Mid-Day, spread like wildfire on social media on Friday. According to the tabloid, the band will perform, as part of the charitable Global Citizen Festival run by Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, on November 19 at the Bandra grounds of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority. The paper added that the ticket prices will start at Rs 25,000 and go up to Rs 5 lakh – “the official tickets will go live on Book My Show on September 12”, it said.
The reported ticket prices tickled social media’s funny bone, with many people making references to the recently-launched iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus that are priced, tentatively, at Rs 60,000 and above.
It didn’t make any difference even when Vijay Nair, CEO of Only Much Louder, claimed that 90% of the tickets for the Global Citizen Festival are free.
The speculation over Coldplay’s gig had started last year, when Martin played an impromptu set in Delhi on a visit to the country, along with actor Frieda Pinto, as part of a Global Poverty Project delegation. In September 2015, when his band shot the video for their track Hymn for the Weekend with actor Sonam Kapoor, the chatter only got louder.
Incidentally, Google India had tweeted about the Coldplay concert in August, but that tweet was deleted minutes later.
On Friday, once the news was confirmed, Twitter roped in comedian Kapil Sharma for its repertoire of jokes. Sharma has alleged that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation asked him to cough up a bribe of Rs 5 lakh for the construction of his office.
The November event will reportedly feature the likes of hip-hop artist Jay-Z, actors Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Deepika Padukone, and singer-composer AR Rahman. For Twitter, of course, it was a great opportunity to put its humour on display, even though all the facts are not known.
There was also a deluge of memes.