People want to dance? Too right.

In most mainstream Bollywood movies, actors can stand up in the middle of a happy scene, a sad scene, an angry scene, a 'flashback' scene,  a 'dream sequence' and in fact any scene to break out into a song and dance. I see some of you smirking. Well- Boo to you!  Because it is clear that humans do want to dance, and often for no rhyme or reason.

What, you don't believe me ?  Then what are these people doing in Liverpool Street, London in the video below.

Well that was the T-mobile advert but here's what some youngsters in South Korea were up to a few years ago. Some people have called it one of the ...... yawn...... less interesting flash mobs ever. Still, I think the umbrellas were kind of cute ;-)

Its worth mentioning (if you believe Wiki) that flash mobs were used as a social experiment in 2003 where 130 people flooded Macy's  and gathered around a ... rug (!) In 2006 London had its first silent disco at Victoria tube station. And we've all seen the New York Central Station 'Freeze' in 2008 which was probably the event that made any self-respecting city organise at least one flash mob.

I wish I was at Miami airport in mid -2011 when the one below happened. Some awesome dance moves there! This flash mob was used to advertise a new route from Lisbon to Miami. According to purists a gathering/ dance group/ organised event for the purpose of corporate advertising or political propaganda cannot be classified as a 'flash mob'.
 

This was at Dubai airport .....

In 2011, the land of cinematic song-and-dance finally got its own flash mob. Mumbai became the first city in India to have a proper flash mob, in the same station where the popular song 'Jai Ho' from Slumdog Millionaire was filmed. The station was earlier known as Bombay VT (Victoria Terminus) but as part of the politically motivated, erasing-colonial-history-agenda it is now called Mumbai CST (Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus). Here's the clip:

So is that Mumabi=1, Delhi =0 then? Not quite. In fact Delhi has had its share of flash mobs "with a purpose" in several shopping malls (no surprise there- seeing that Delhi city is vying for the  'Queen of Shopping Malls' title). The first one from my limited YouTube trawl appears to be from Jan. 2010. See below the 'Freeze' and the ensuing fall:

And since then many more of these have occurred in urban India- Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata have all had their share. As they say, better late than never. The novelty now seems to be wearing off. But new locations and new ideas could keep it going for a while.

I stand by my thesis - human beings across the world like to shake their bum spontaneously and not just in Bollyoood movies! But nobody does it like a Bollywood Masala movie. Years of practice as you can see below in one of the my favourite cheesy song from the mid-1990s 'Shahar ki ladki' which translates as 'The City Girl'  :D