By Himanshu Guru: A Rave party could be termed as a safe place where one can be amused and weird as much as he wants to be. But in India, rave parties where men and women drink alcohol, consume drugs, and dance to any kind of music without having restrictions.
The western culture rave parties have been quite popular amongst youngsters in India. The craze has also put many people under trouble. Many rave parties have been busted in the recent years. Still, people are attracted towards the rave parties.
It cannot be exactly said about its origin. It is believed that the wild Bohemian parties in the late 1950s in London were termed as “rave”. In the course of time, it can be called as the dance party organised by the emergence of European techno music and American house music in 1980s. The venue of the rave parties was being kept secret and only the invitees and friends were told to join the parties at night.
According to a public document on the website of the US Justice Department, the rave parties and rave culture had an underground status in Europe. The rave party features electronic music and laser light shows, projected images, paint, glow sticks and smoke machines. People used to dance to the music including trance, psytrance, techno, dubstep, jungle, jungle techno, drum and bass, UK hardcore, hardcore techno, happy hardcore and some other genre music played by disc jockeys.
However, the reports in past few years in India showed a negative side of the rave parties, which is a cultural decline in the name of fun and amusement. The impact of western culture in India was found when Mumbai police busted a rave party at Oakwood hotel in Juhu on May 21 this year. At least 100 people including 38 women, mostly foreign nationals, were detained. The police also arrested the party organiser, Vishesh Vijay Handa, under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, two cricketers – Rahul Sharma of India and Wayne Parnell of South Africa. Around 110 gms of cocaine and several tablets, suspected to be MDMA and other enctatogenic drugs like Ecstacy, had been recovered from the venue during the raid.
Another rave party was busted by the police in Panchgani on last Saturday midnight. Police arrested 18 people including 5 bar girls in the party held at a lodge in Gureghar village, around 7 km from the hill station. The party titled Enjoy party was hosted by the 38-year-old Anil Babu Dhole, a resident of Malewadi village in Solapur, at Shri Balaji Lodge. Police seized country-made foreign liquor bottles, a DJ machine, music systems and disco lights. They claimed that most of the suspects were the traders of fertilizers and farmers from Thane, Solapur, Pandarpur, Mumbai and Akluj.