Chandigarh, April 14
Swaying to the popular bhangra beat at discotheques is certainly no longer a fad with youngsters. The disco bubble which took the city by storm about five years back has definitely lost it’s charm with discos barely doing business except on weekends and as hosts for private parties.
“Chandigarh was not ready for all these joints”, was a typical comment of a Disco goer. Where there was place for one disco to do well, many more opened up, as entrepreneurs got caught up in the hype. Their estimate, however, proved false with discos not being able to draw crowds on regular basis.
“The students’ population, which is the only disco-going crowd here, is not enough to keep the business floating” said Mr Vicky Bajwa, owner of Las Vegas, one of the pioneer discotheques in the city. “Despite the fact that Las Vegas enjoys the status of bring the first disco in town, with the stiff competition thrown in by the other joints, it is hardly making any profit now,” he added.
The attempt to popularise the disco joints by inviting the popular singers and performers at regular intervals has also apparently failed, which was evident from a recent function organised in one of the popular discos a few days back when three popular local artists — Avtar Tari, Maninder Deol and Bhupinder Bubble — failed to draw a decent number of people.
However, with the number of visitors going down day by day, no proprietor is willing to invest that kind of money. “Keeping in mind that the number of disco goers is only a handful in the city, it involves high risk to invest a big amount in renovation. Besides, where disco joints in Delhi keep their entry fee for Rs 600 per couple, in Chandigarh even Rs 250 seems heavy for the disco-going students crowd,” said Mr Bajwa.
“Besides the high entry fee, even the charges for the refreshments available inside are almost double the market price,” said Ranbir , a college student.” With our limited pocket money, we students cannot afford to frequent such joints” he added.
High entry fee is not the only reason for the declining popularity of Discotheques in the city. To check hooliganism in discos, the disco owners made it a policy to allow only couple entry, which created a problem for single teenagers. “It is very hard to arrange for a date on the spur of the moment”, said Dinesh, a youngster, who was disappointed at the couple entry policy of the discos.
While the boys are trying to come over the couple entry problem, the girls are dejected with the evening curfew imposed on them by their parents. “Initially we could make any excuse to stay out till late night as our parents at that time were not much aware of such joints. But after reading about such joints in various newspapers, they are now wiser and do not listen to our excuses”, said Pooja, a resident of the city.
Justifying the their attendance at the discos as a temporary factor due to exam time, sources said though the attendance at present is almost 50 percent less than the regular crowd, they are hopeful that the trend will pick up once the college and school examinations are over.
