India Insight

It is said that each Mumbai resident passes through the city’s iconic Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus at least once. On Sunday, the railway station was the setting for 200 Mumbaikars to do something out of the ordinary.

Thanks to Shonan Kothari, 200 people got together and danced in the middle of the crowded station, three years and a day after the November 26 attacks at the same place.

A YouTube video of the flash mob has been viewed nearly 150,000 times and went viral on social networking sites. Actor Abhishek Bachchan and director Rohan Sippy were among the celebrities who tweeted the video link.

Kothari, 23, says she didn’t mean for this to be a symbol of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, or anything else really.

“Nothing about this had an agenda. We just wanted to have fun,” she told Reuters.

Kothari started working on the idea a month ago and realised she would have to work quickly to get more people on board. Why 200? “Because in my head, that was a big enough number,” she said.

She emailed 20 of her closest friends and asked them to recruit 20 people each, on the condition they keep quiet about it.

“I didn’t want it to be announced on social media or a public platform because that would ruin the surprise element.”

Kothari even refused sponsorship, paying out of her own (or as she laughingly points out, her father’s) pocket.

“I did have people wanting to buy it out but I didn’t want to make this commercial at all. It was just about having fun.”

This isn’t Mumbai’s first flash mob (several brands have organised such initiatives in the past), but this is certainly the first time it’s got so much attention. And going by conversations on Twitter and Facebook, it certainly won’t be the last.