Now before you go any further I did like to clear one thing. This post doesn’t talk about what’s cool and not cool when in a club or about how you should go about trying to woo the opposite sex. These are my observations and mine alone and if I have unknowingly hurt someone’s feelings.. well let’s just say I don’t give a cow’s tail.
I have borrowed the word ‘clubber’ from the generic terminology associated with the folk who haunt the crazy and dazed congregation of people who believe that shifting their body weight alternately on either leg and not hitting a single beat means dancing. Now don’t get me wrong here. I am not against clubs or socializing and this post is not going to be about that. I am just pissed with the way people try so hard to adhere to platitudinous social Gen-X dogma of ‘kewlness’.
I have been passionate about dancing since I can remember and even though I have a keen interest in the same my visits to dance clubs have been pretty limited. Coz if you want to really enjoying dancing, that’s definitely NOT the place to be. You would rather be well off dancing crazy at your home or in your bathroom (Come on, at some point you would have danced in the shower) or on the road after midnight (Now you wouldn’t want to be run over, would you?). I hate to generalize but there has not been a single exception to my above point among the few ones I have visited.
To corroborate one of the reasons of my current angry young man mode, I did like to recount an episode from “Life Sucks”, hosted by MTV VJ Cyrus Sahukar on MTV, about the much accepted and promoted social gesture of going to a club as a couple ( I know for sure that to be true in India and not in the US). In the episode, Cyrus mentions how you are likened to an eel in the overflowing gutters of Mumbai during the monsoons; were you to turn up at a club without a ‘date’. (Well alright he didn’t actually say that and I am just rephrasing it in my own words but the gist remains the same J.. And this doesn’t apply for women.. Gender Reservation anyone?) So they classify you to be a loser since you can’t get a girl to come with you even if you can do the Rock `N` Roll like Elvis Presley or maybe Moonwalk like Mr. Jackson himself. And as if that was not enough, they punish you for coming alone by charging you more as Entry Fee termed ‘Stag Entry’ over people who come as couples, which clearly doesn’t have anything to do with the antler bearer. I don’t even feel like dignifying the rationale behind such an arrangement with a counter argument so I am going to leave it at that.
Now that you have made your way inside a club, past the beefed up bouncers in the doorway flashing menacing stares, you are reminded of the Mumbai local compartments. No, I did not bring the Mumbai locals into the picture coz I lived most of my life in Mumbai but because they are well known for having over 200 people travelling while standing in awkward positions in a single compartment which has a maximum capacity of 50. Similarly, a typical dance floor in a club has close to 50-100 people swaying (I will flay you alive if you say dancing) in a space where at most 25 people can dance. And what a sight it is.
You walk in to see couples holding goblets of liquor, inebriated and oblivious of their surroundings, moving from side to side without any idea of which track is currently being played. But what’s more interesting is the manner in which the Male component of the ‘Couple’ entity gets all territorial, popping his eyes out like Jim Carrey in the 1994 hit ‘The Mask’ at other males in the vicinity thereby ensuring the safety of the girl with him. (I find this very much akin to what Man’s best friend does around a tree on his morning and evening walks).. As if some masked musketeer was going to gallop their way inside on a horse and kidnap the girl. If you were so concerned about her, why don’t you lock her up a tall tower in some distant land and endow her with Rapunzel like long hair (OR you could also try not coming to the club buts hey it’s your call).
And then there are the ones whom I hate the most. The guys who are in the crowd for no apparent reason, imitating how one would apply soap while taking a bath (Hey you can’t blame them. A disoriented and disconnected sequences of hops skips and frog jumps can also be termed as dancing.. only a more dumber version which could be a good addition to the bloopers section). Now you may want to dance alone or with your group of friends and have a nice time but sadly you can’t coz you will be interrupted by them morons who will be jumping around any group of girls they can find, like a bumbling band of baboons stamping on everyone else’s foot. Frankly, I have seen baboons behave more sophisticated than that on the Discovery Channel and before there are reports of Angry Baboon Uprisings in zoos all over the world, I did like to convey my apologies for having compared them with such douchebags.
My problem is not with the way people dance or with the unfair stag entry fee. My problem is with people who, have no interest in dance whatsoever, come to a dance club coz they think that’s what cool people do( Or maybe tell the world that they were there via a Facebook check-in).. Yes once you are drunk anybody can dance (I know this partly because I hail from Kerala where the word “Pambu”, or Snake if you will, has another meaning which is wildly different from the original and partly since I have a lot of bewda pals ;)) and I feel that’s the main reason all clubs come with a bar.
So the next time you see a lonely figure dancing away to glory not giving a damn about what others are doing and having a nice time all by himself with the music, it would most likely be me or a certain Mr. Chinappa with whom I share my first name (He claims to have danced all alone to house music in a club few years ago since no one was into it). I don’t care if people are more interested in getting themselves drunk or want to flock the place to show how much of a couple they are. For all I care, I would be dancing in the middle of the Kalahari Desert if there was good music to be found(But since it would be too hot and too much trouble to get there and the chances of my finding good music there are similar to Ra-One winning the Oscar’s for the Best Script or Gunda for Best Dialogues, I occasionally turn a blind eye to the idiosyncrasy I am currently jabbering about and have a nice time by myself or with my friends at the not-so-dancey clubs).
And lastly .. after reading all this if you still plan to come to a disco / dance club for any reason apart from dancing all I have to say to you is that “I will look for you.. I will find you.. and I will dwindle the bloody living daylight out of your pea sized brain” ( the last line did not come in its entirety from Liam Neeson in Taken but I needed to get home the point :) )
Shake a Leg Amigos!
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