18/03/2013
Well the "THE TIMES,LONDON(UK)" has good things to say about the Hip-Hop scene here in kolkata..
Check out this article by
Robin Pagnamenta(Special Correspondent of The Times,London)
There are no direct flights or buses to Japan.
To reach this roughshod slum area in South Calcutta, visitors must pick their way across an open sewer, creep past guards and take care in the darkness not to tread on piles of garbage.
But for denizens of the city's growing underground breakdance scene, that is one of its attractions.
"The cops don't harass us here," says Valentine Gomes, 21, who took up breakdancing, or B-Boying, three years ago.
"Everywhere else they move us on, tell us we are causing a nuisance - but not here."
Breakdancing may have originated over 30 years ago in the ghettos of New York, but here in Calcutta - a city notorious for its grinding urban poverty and deprivation - it is a relatively new phenomenon - and its popularity is booming.
"I used to do gymnastics but then someone showed me some breakdancing on TV and I wanted to know more about it," says Vikash, 15, a reformed pickpocket from the nearby slum of Topsia, sweating heavily after a particularly intense routine.
Here in this desperately poor city of 15 million people - over half of them under 25 - there are relatively few recreational facilities - a fact that may help explain why so many youths in Calcutta and other Indian cities are embracing hip-hop culture - and especially breakdancing - which requires little more than an open patch of flat ground and a decent pair of shoes to take up.
Vikash and some other boys from Topsia learned basic moves by friends. They picked up more advanced techniques by watching YouTube and from Havikoro, a breakdance collective from Texas, who visited the city last year.
"If people from other countries can do it then why can't we?" asks Nairit Mukherjee, 19, of Genesis, one of several B-Boy 'crews' in the city. "We see it as a challenge. We Bengalis have always loved to dance."
The youths who practice at this derelict outdoor exhbition ground beside a highway, surrounded by construction sites and tin shacks, call it Japan because it is so remote and, at night when it is illuminated by halogen spotlights, it has a futuristic, sci-fi feel.
Under this eery halflight, a group of young men - most from surrounding slums - are deep in concentration. Amid a melee of whirling limbs, spins, headstands and freezes, they take turns to dance, intensely and silently, spurred on only by a rap tune emitted from a mobile phone.
"There's a lot of talent here but it gets buried because we don't get much exposure," says Harsh "Funkey" Vardhanbhan, 22, who complains that more established scenes in Delhi and Mumbai, are better funded - with corporate sponsorship and the possibility of lucrative work in Bollywood. "We just do it because we love to dance."
Nevertheless, breakdancers, or B-Boys, from Kolkata like Vardhanbhan have started competing in and winning competitions, such as the Challenge Cup India in Bangalore.
Breakdancing may receive little official support, but remarkably for a country and city of such dizzying inequality, it cuts across social boundaries.
In Japan - and in Maddox Square, another popular meeting place for B-Boys, middle class enthusiasts 'battle' playfully with kids from some of the city's toughest slums.
"It's my dream to be a good dancer," says Raju Shaw, 12, from a poor neigbourhood in Lilwa, who says he practices at school with his friends.
Their shared enthusiasm doesn't stop the stares and disapproving comments from the older generation however, says Amartya Dasgupta, 17, who says he taught himself body-popping almost entirely on his own from watching YouTube.
"My family says it's not useful - they want us to be studying instead - but I love to dance too much so I won't give it up."
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