Dhanush flash mobbed: Kolaveri di takes over Churchgate

Mumbai Mirror

Mumbai, 22 December 2011: City’s busiest station comes to a standstill as hundreds join Dhanush in a Why This Kolaveri jig.

 

On a regular day, Churchgate station at 4.45 pm is full of people weaving past each other, bags and briefcases clutched to their sides, buzzing purposefully towards their regular train home. On Wednesday evening, for five minutes, they broke into a mad jig.

 

 

A flash mob organised by Mumbai Mirror and led by Kolaveri sensation Dhanush brought the entire station to a standstill, the reaction of the crowd leaving the Tamil actor stunned. “I’m overwhelmed by the response, and by the power of people coming together to sing the song. I first experienced stardom eight years ago when I made it big in Tamil films. I am living it all over again in this second innings, thanks to Mumbai Mirror. It truly feels wonderful,” Dhanush said. In the four weeks since the video went viral, it has already received 25,965,856 hits on YouTube and has inspired a slew of versions in different languages across India (and one in Pakistan).

 

With a dozen bodyguards around him,  Dhanush sparked wild scenes when he walked in - surprised commuters hooting, whistling, jostling and shoving their mobile phones and cameras at him.

 

The PA system blared Kolaveri di, and a crowd of 300 people - including college students, office-goers, housewives and a couple of foreigners - started dancing to the beat. When hundreds of voices broke into the ‘hand-la glass-u…glass-la scotch-u’ stanza, the loudspeakers were drowned out.

 

 

Dhanush, mobbed through the performance, barely had space to move, forget shaking a leg. Such were the levels of excitement that the paanwallah outside thought “Sallu aa gaya”. The video can be viewed at www.gaana.com.

 

Sisters Archana (26) and Nishita (20), two of the dancers who were selected to perform at Churchgate, had absolutely no regrets about bunking office and college respectively: “It was totally worth it,” they giggled. College student Jayesh Sahu said, “It was the best thing I have ever seen. It was chaotic, it was hot and it was sweaty. But I loved it.”

 

Each member of the flash mob had taken time off their hectic schedules over the last three days to practise the dance steps with choreographer Terence Lewis. Forty-two-year-old Geeta Shreedhar, who lives in Chennai, packed her bags and got her daughters Dikshita and Sharda to the city only to take part in the five-minute event. “I love Dhanush, and Kolaveri di is simply mind-blowing,” she said.

 

Two college-going teens, Nisha and Sanjukta, replaced their study hours with the dance sessions. “It was mad and chaotic, but awesome fun,” they said. A middle-aged gentleman who stood by, watching the dramatic scenes around him said, “This was truly an expression of freedom by Western Railway commuters.”

 

Dhanush live at Oval

 

Next stop for Dhanush was the Oval Maidan, where - with neither a loudspeaker nor a sound system in sight - he got almost 400 people to sing and dance along with him. He had finally found some space to move, and he didn’t disappoint his fans who had followed him to the Oval from Churchgate.

 

“My voice has gone for a toss, but it doesn’t matter. What does is that I connected with the youth and their voice. It felt amazing to hear all of them scream the song back at me. Nothing could top the sound of all our voices coming together.”