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Inside Delhi’s underground party scene

The capital’s Northeastern and African communities create their own nightlife at the city's margins

Picture yourself in a massive nightclub, an expensive sound system bumping Drake, where lithe, stylish black guys mingle with immaculately madeup Asian girls sipping Red Bull with vodka. You could be in any number of clubs around the world. Noida probably wouldn't be one of your first guesses. Express toll routes and metro lines connect this relentlessly growing suburb to central Delhi, but arriving here, at this time of night - or morning, rather - without geographical context, you might not even guess you were in India.

I reach the Noida club after the usual South Delhi hotspots have closed for the night. An opening DJ plays to a sparsely populated dance floor, mostly Africans at this point, but the Northeastern crowd likes to party late, and will soon take over the floor. The party is organized by a Delhi-based crew of DJs and promoters called Urbanatic, who pack hundreds of punters into high-priced nightclubs all over the National Capital Region up to six nights a week. But you won't find these events in high-profile venues like Lap, Blue Frog or Kitty Su, and their sound is neither Bollywood nor chart-topping EDM. If you aren't African or Northeastern - or a serious hip-hop head in Delhi - it's unlikely you've heard about any of this at all. But for these outsiders, a night out free from stares and slurs is as much of a draw as the music, a scene hidden only because most of us would never think to look for it.

The Urbanatic crew has come together around DJ Karma, a 35-year-old nightlife impresario from Dubai, with family roots in Uttarakhand and the more East Asian appearance that we typically associate with people from India's Northeastern states. Karma smiles often and speaks deliberately with an international school accent, littered with Americanisms. His standard attire could be found on almost any urban street in the world: baggy jeans and a hoodie, a bandana over his round, shaved head. Coming to India to attend university 12 years ago, Karma quickly discovered that in New Delhi, you don't have to be a foreigner to be an outsider. Already an active DJ in Dubai, Karma says he struggled to get into Delhi clubs because he didn't look "Indian".

So Karma put his energy into creating a parallel nightlife of his own. He's had to find venues willing to accept his "non-Indian" crowd, often after regular hours, sometimes off the books. The attraction of an Urbanatic event is that in a city where high walls limit access to houses, shopping malls and even parks, a city where your father's name might be more useful than a degree and you may be accepted or turned away from a variety of venues based on your pigmentation, none of that shit matters. Anybody who can pay the cover at the door is welcome.

Once things really get going, the crowd is dominated by the Northeastern crowd, with a healthy representation from the African student scene, a handful of West Delhi Punjabi boys, a couple of stunning Naga transsexuals and a solo white dude with spiky hair, flared jeans, a gold chain and a very lost expression.

Sitting near the bar with DJ Karma and taking in the menagerie, I ask whether throwing the Northeastern, African, desi and tranny crowd all into one pot ever leads to trouble. He laughs. The entire point of doing what he does is to create a space in which nobody gets turned away for being who they are. They're not Northeastern parties, they're "misfit" parties. "It's not about rules, it's about misfits," he tells me, "misfits who found their niche."

The essentials of the Saturday club scene I've just described - late night, booze, sweaty gyrating bodies on a dance floor - are tenets taken for granted across much of the world, but in Delhi, things just aren't like that for these guys. Let's be real. Delhi can often be a racist place.

South Indians living in Delhi complain of being categorized as undifferentiated "Madrasis", and, pale-faced American that I am, I've had "gora kutta" shouted at me more than once on Delhi streets. But for Delhi's Northeastern and African residents, the consequences of xenophobia are far greater.

While Africans can't escape a hyper-visible existence every time they leave their homes, they remain invisible as far as government statistics are concerned. Reliable numbers on their respective populations simply don't exist. Press reports estimate the number of Africans in Delhi at anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000, or, less than one-half of one-hundredth of one per cent of Delhi's populace. No country of origin data is published by the Indian government.

Likewise for Northeasterners, there are no official urban demographic statistics by state of origin. But a survey by the Centre for Science and Environment, an established Delhi NGO that works on urban planning policy, found the number of Delhi migrants coming from Northeastern states to be so small it was tossed in the "other" category, which included 22 non-North Indian states and seven union territories, collectively accounting for about five per cent of Delhi's migrant population.

Almost every African partygoer with whom I speak bemoans the challenges of finding housing in the capital. One man reported being tossed out of an apartment with no notice when his landlord - who wasn't directly involved in the deal - discovered that he was from Africa. Which country didn't matter.

But housing discrimination pales in comparison with more severe incidents. This past January, at the behest of the Aam Aadmi Party's Delhi Law Minister Somnath Bharti, police raided the residences of several Ugandan and Nigerian women. The women have accused the police of abuse and of forcing them to provide urine samples in public, prompting the National Human Rights Commission to demand a formal account of the incident from the Delhi police, which is still ongoing.

The February killing of Nido Tania, a Northeastern student who was beaten to death in broad daylight by a North Indian shopkeeper and several young relatives, is a reminder that though bigotry faced by Northeasterners may be more veiled than when Karma first arrived, it continues to emerge from behind a more civil mask.

DJ Baba, one of the few desi members of Karma's Urbanatic crew, a regular selector on the Delhi African party scene and on the decks tonight in Noida, says "a lot of people went for protests [after Tania's murder... And then] were coming to the party at night."

Sometimes, the dance floor can be a place to sweat out more than just the daily stresses of a nine-to-five; but just like everyone else, Delhi's outsiders come to these parties to get drunk, sing along to cheesy pop songs, break their heels and make stupid mistakes that will be great stories someday.

Set lists for these fringe parties are drawn together by Karma, Baba and a few others from the ethnically diverse Urbanatic Crew, under the unifying principle of mainstream accessibility. Tonight, electronic dance remixes of Rihanna blend into the Black Eyed Peas, then transition into Drake's "Hold On We're Going Home". As the tune plays for a second time, I point it out to Karma, who laughs slyly and shakes his head at me. "It doesn't matter," he says, barely audible, leaning into my ear, "It's all fucking pop, man."

Moments later, DJ Baba demonstrates the universality of these pop bangers, and in the process provides me with the high point of all such parties I've attended over the past several months. It comes and goes in a second, but it is sublime.

Baba drops some Naija, a catch-all term for the contemporary Nigerian club-pop genre that often sounds a bit like Auto-tuned dancehall. Three petite, impeccably styled, young and devastatingly cute Northeastern girls snap to attention. Their dancing takes on greater purpose, and as the chorus arrives, the girls as well as several Africans on the floor line up to dance in unison while singing along to P-Square's "Chop My Money".

The girls' hands form the international sign for making it rain as the chorus repeats "Chop my money!" and as it ends, and this crazy moment of Afro-Northeastern cultural transmission is over, it's as if three Asiatic girls weren't just doing synchronized dance moves to a Nigerian pop hit in a massive nightclub in the suburbs of New Delhi.

I later discover that when business-savvy Akon saw the potential in selling his content-lite club candy to millions of West Africans the world over, he signed P-Square and recorded a verse for a remix of the song. Tonight's absurd moment of globalization, brought to you by Akon.

Tall and well-dressed, Chanda breathes confidence. The 28-year-old Congolese came to Delhi about six years ago to study, but has tried out several hustles in this city since, and is currently promoting club nights in Delhi until he's able to secure a decent career back home. His Facebook profile is plastered with party pictures in which he mugs for the camera, arms casually draped around dapper men and beautiful women. So when he speaks gravely about the realities of life for an African in Delhi, it isn't out of any inborn timidity.

"You don't know what an African life is here in Delhi," he laughs, cynically. "It's hell... The way they stare at you, the way they touch you."

I ask him if, after his six years in Delhi, he's ever been frightened for his safety. He looks at me as if I've just asked an incredibly stupid question. And I realize that I have.

"I'm always worried," Chanda says. "Always. Very few [Indian people] accept Africans." He pauses and shakes his head. "They tolerate us. It's different." He says the only way an African can buy respect in Delhi is cash: "Cash is magic. Look at how [the police] treat their own people when they have less money."

Coming from a man who earns his living persuading people to come to his parties, Chanda's advice for Africans with low budgets underlines his sincerity: "You better be careful. Stay home... Don't go out."

Chanda stepped onto the scene nearly a decade after Karma, but it was clear that he wasn't welcome in Delhi's mainstream party community either. An expat-night regular at South Delhi's Urban Pind, Chanda arrived one night without his usual, racially diverse entourage. No longer in Caucasian company, he was told that only couples were being given entrance.

"Okay," he tells me, recounting the event with almost righteous relish, "you think I can't get a girl? I'll be right back." But when he came back as a couple - a black couple - he was once again refused entrance.

"When they say expat," Chanda reminds me, "they don't mean us."

Chanda's We Da Party crew hosts "Global Fridays" at Spasso, an off-the-radar venue in South Delhi, hidden on a dead-end alley behind Saket's Select Citywalk mall, not far from Khirki Extension, the neighbourhood where January's alleged police misconduct against its African denizens took place. Though predominantly African parties occasionally pop up in Gurgaon or other South Delhi locales like Hauz Khas, Spasso is ground zero for African nightlife. Since African revellers don't demand the late-night venues that the Northeastern crowd does, the parties are found closer to the South Delhi neighborhoods where many Africans live - Arjun Nagar, Malviya Nagar, Munirka and Vasant Kunj.

The Spasso crowd, primarily made up of Nigerians and Congolese, start to show up early. They order bottles of vodka or Sula Brut and sip their drinks at tables surrounding the dance floor. Any division between the English and French speakers is minimal compared to their shared Africanness. Like at Karma's parties, anyone is welcome to show up, but they mostly don't. The crowd is almost exclusively black. By dint of my skin colour, I can't help but stand out, and I am only able to speak to men at these parties; the women regard my questions with the kind of learned defensiveness that Delhi can be so good at teaching. I can only guess at what motivates their hesitation, but given the care with which even privileged women are forced to navigate the city, especially after dark, I am not surprised by any instinct towards self-preservation.

The North Indian photographer who accompanies me is regarded with suspicion, prompting Paul, a Nigerian partygoer, to tell me, unbidden, that I'd "better ask my photographer to be respectful." This reception is in stark contrast to the men and women eagerly posing for the camera at Urbanatic's Noida party. This is a city that has begun to come to terms with its Northeastern population, but not its Africans.

The tune selection at Spasso leans heavily on Naija, with a dash of Congolese music and hip hop. Sartorially savvy young men and heavily made-up women sway on the dance floor, while others stand to the side, near the speakers. Some seem too young to be in the club, but nobody seems to mind.

I go to three events at Spasso, and while none are empty, none are packed either. Chanda tells me that January's police violence against those African women in Khirki Village has cast a long shadow, depressing the turnouts. People are nervous. They don't want to face police unnecessarily.

Urbanatic's DJ Baba regularly plays Nigerian club tunes to Chanda's Spasso crowd. As someone who moves between these two scenes, he is well placed to speak to the more overt nature of harassment faced by Africans in Delhi. "People don't treat them well," he says. "They don't treat them the way they treat other [foreigners]." But Baba's also sympathetic to the police, citing fights he's witnessed at African parties: "The cops try to be aggressive with them before they get aggressive with the cops," he tells me. Baba's analysis soon leaps to the heart of the conflict: "[T]he main problem is... a gap in understanding. Africans speak English differently. [Indian police and Africans] don't understand each other, so they fight. The conversation never actually ends. They don't get to conclusions."

To say that Delhi is hard on outsiders won't invite a lot of argument. But the unexpected benefit of so many walls is that motivated men and women react by creating new spaces for themselves and their people to exist. The bouncers may still check you're wearing shoes that comply with the dress code, but they won't blink at the colour of your skin. Chanda's turnouts are moderate compared to an Urbanatic gig, but they give attendees the same sense of freedom: There are very few public places in Delhi where most of the faces are African. I can only imagine their relief, their relative comfort at being in such a room.

And so while the young men standing in a line and dancing in unison may be a bit half-hearted in their moves, even that half-heartedness seems to reflect the fact that they're able to relax, to not worry about who's watching or listening. The constant vigilance that Delhi demands can be put aside, at least in one small bar outside of a shopping mall, between 10:30 and 12:30 on a Friday night.

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