Working in nightlife grants queer folx in India agency, but it isn’t without its pitfalls

While working in nightlife has allowed queer folx in India to gain more control over cultural production, the fundamental challenges are still aplenty

My love for dance music stemmed from rummaging through my mother’s collection of cassette tapes as a 10-year-old. It introduced me to artists like Apache Indian, Cliff Richard, The Carpenters, Kraftwerk, Michael Jackson, and Irene Cara, among others. Until then, my taste in music was largely defined by whatever pop culture pervaded my peripatetic childhood—think Kuradhani Gopala on repeat, for instance—but music to dance along to had always been it.

Something about moving my body to the rhythm serves as a reminder that life is rooted in the joy of the present. More than a performance art, dancing, for me, has been a way to connect with people in a community. As I grew into my teens, my body became increasingly fetishised by the male gaze; people around me policed how I sat, what I wore, and even how much my hands would swing when I walked! This eventually led me to the safety of a dimly-lit dance floor, the rave, the mosh pit, being up front and centre near the DJ booth, focused only on the music, allowing it to flow through my body. As I began frequenting gigs in my twenties, nightlife became the space where I re-discovered the freedom of moving to music in the company of others and uncovered the queerness of my own body language. I also began to meet other queer folx who were not only drawn to it but also worked to make the space safe for people like me.

One of my early peers on the dance floor was J Nishanth (he/him), who gravitated towards the celebration of art and culture in the scene, and worked full-time managing and programming such spaces from 2016-2021. “I hoped to curate and create experiences that shaped the country’s ‘hanging-out’ culture. I did not want to work at an office desk, but was keen on understanding the nuances of hyperlocal culture in Indian cities,” he says.

For many others, however, working in nightlife was not a strategic career move. “I never thought I’d work in nightlife”, says 33-year-old BAST (they/them) who has been living on their own and taking up odd jobs to make ends meet since they were just about 17 years old. BAST began engaging in nightlife as a member of the audience and later as a music journalist, while hanging out with their friends who were DJs, event organisers, and promoters. Soon enough, they started a collective called the Gaia Goddesses, and set up stalls at parties for face and body art, and selling knick-knacks. “My aim was to get more women and queer people into these parties, because they are usually such a sausage fest. It was something [the collective] added to the space—to make it hipper, cooler, cuter, and most importantly, safer, in every sense,” they explain.

Zainab (she/they) too was drawn to working in nightlife due to their love for music and the community that it creates. Despite having gone to medical school, they started their career at a record label in 2017 in New Delhi and later moved to manage content and marketing for an online community radio station. Zainab’s career in nightlife has transformed over the years and today, she makes music and undertakes DJ gigs in the moniker “Zequenx”. “I never expected to care so much about something that I began as just a job, with no expectations. Today, I am grateful for the emotional, creative, and financial support that working in nightlife lends me. I love my musical endeavours and can see myself doing this for a long time,” they reflect.

Nightlife as a place of work 

“Working in nightlife has always been a side hustle for me. It’s not possible to work in this industry full-time without the privilege of a financially stable background. While my expectations were to just get paid in the beginning, getting paid is the biggest challenge in this industry,” shares BAST.

Zainab echoes this view, and calls it a “semi-professional” space. “Nightlife still has some time before it formalises its processes and introduces professionalism,” they add. To mitigate this very issue, Nishanth chose to work at India’s biggest homegrown cafe/bar chain. “I wanted to ensure that I would be working in a structured organisation that paid decently and opened doors to ancillary industries like alcoholic beverages, food delivery, and artist management. It helped me gain a better understanding of how such businesses work and how the audience evolves,” he shares about his choice of workplace. “I later found that the industry is largely focused on making a quick buck, instead of creating meaningful impact. Nonetheless, I did find a way to support the alternative art community [through my work]. Given the size of the organisation that I was part of, we were able to pump in budgets that ran into eight-to-nine-figure sums (in ₹) per annum into [creating a space for upcoming artists].”

On the other hand, the very industry that allows nightlife culture to function is  also responsible for creating its underbelly. “The space is riddled with substance abuse. The truth is that the more people drink, the more money the industry makes, which, in turn, is correlated with better-paying jobs in the sector and better-curated experiences. What this means for the safety of queer persons participating in it is that they are surrounded by an intoxicated, heteronormative audience, who have a rudimentary understanding of queerness, making it an unsafe dance floor with uncomfortable gazes. Inclusivity was a unique selling point [and a marketing ploy], not a given,” says Nishanth. 

Few spaces in the country have safety measures or harm-reduction interventions in place. “In general, there are not enough trained awareness teams to handle the situations that can crop up in the kind of environments that nightlife creates—whether it is substance abuse, hate crimes, sexual violence, or a really bad trip. For queer people in particular, it is unsafe because there isn’t enough representation in the ranks as DJs, event producers, artist managers, and other roles,” observes Zainab, highlighting the need for thoughtful curation. 

Thirty-eight-year-old Ami Shroff, who is based out of Mumbai and freelances as a flair bartender and mixologist at events, emphasises that such issues are systemic and the time of the day have no bearing on their occurrence. “Unsafe toxic mentalities affect women, queer folx, and anyone who is [systemically] oppressed. It’s not that these things will show up more in the night; sometimes [the] night can even feel safer for us. There are only so many small ways in which we can keep ourselves safe, but as long as misogyny, patriarchy, casteism, racism, and other forms of social discrimination exist, people are going to feel uncomfortable, unsafe, and excluded.” Living in a city like Mumbai, Ami’s perception of the night is characterised by the shift in the city’s ambience. “It is quieter, less crowded, and has better weather, which is probably why I love the night time and working in nightlife seemed attractive to me. However, working at night affects one’s sleeping patterns; we are awake through the night and sleep during the day. The body doesn’t get proper rest, which is why people working at night might need to either work for fewer hours or need longer rest periods.”

The perils of the job

BAST raises pertinent questions that the nightlife industry must have answers for. “When people in power are the ones making the spaces unsafe, then where do you go? It is a constant reminder for all of us to check in and hold our own selves accountable, because holding others to it has not been enough. Even for me, there has been a lot of internalised misogyny and queerphobia that I grew up around as a teenager, but as you grow older and unlearn, you realise that that’s not who you are,” they point out, nudging the rest of us to think about the importance of creating safer spaces for younger audiences engaging with the scene for the first time.

As an organiser myself, especially with queer-only events at Gaysi Family, I have witnessed young folx entering the space wanting to experience the joy of vibing to the music with their friends, while also wearing clothing and accessories that feel affirming to them. Whether it is a trans-masculine person choosing to leave their shirt unbuttoned in public or queer partners embracing each other on the dance floor or even somebody attending such an event all by themselves as a way to explore their identity, my team-mates and I are sensitised to keep a watchful eye out for those who might need to be checked upon, offered water and taken to a quiet, safe corner to decompress, or even just be introduced to other folx in the space to feel a sense of camaraderie. 

“There wouldn't be a dance-floor culture today, if it weren't for the disco revolution in the 1970s that was started by and for queer people, especially [Black folx and people] of colour. It was meant to be a space of freedom where self-expression was celebrated. Most, if not all, of the internationally-heralded nightlife experiences today are in sex-positive dance clubs. In India, we are trying to recreate such powerful experiences with everything but the focus on ensuring safety for queer expression. If the foundation isn't strong, whatever we build over it will fall,” says Nishanth, summing up the collective sentiment.

Over a period of time, working in these spaces can not just affect one’s health, but also lead to burnout and a lack of enthusiasm for it. “I expected working in nightlife to be so much more fun, because it used to be fun for me. But it became just another job, because you’re also checking the count on ticket sales—will you make money? Will enough people show up? Over time, it’s rare that you have fun. I thought life would be a party if I worked in this line, but it’s the opposite,” shares BAST. “I have a complicated love-hate relationship with nightlife today. I am passionate about changing the monolith that has existed by making more spaces for queer people. However, given my disability, I have had to set a lot of boundaries, because working in nightlife is not the most healthy—working nights, clubs and after-parties, little to no sleep, that’s not the lifestyle I align with right now. A lot of my work also revolves around harm reduction because it saved my life, and I’m re-evaluating what I wanted to do when I was younger and working in nightlife,” they add.

Nishanth too feels that as he has grown to understand and celebrate his own queerness, he has learnt to separate substance from art. “Today, if I go out, it is for two reasons: exceptional music and a safe space created by the community. If neither of these are present, I simply don’t go out,” he adds, reflecting on a few tough years of working in nightlife management, while navigating his own tryst with substance use, which he found helpful in lowering his inhibitions and socialising with both colleagues and patrons.

Nightlife as not just a spectacle, but a sanctuary

As a new era dawns on the Indian dance floor and nightlife culture, it is imperative that they are not reduced to arenas for entertainment and the trappings of excess. Instead, they must be preserved as the hotbeds of self-discovery, community-building, and advocacy as they were intended to be by their creators. This can only be possible when the people building the space are afforded the agency of leadership roles, so as to be able to escape the precarity of financial instability, are resourced to deal with substance abuse and identity-based discrimination, and can implement a system of accountability. It is about time we reimagined nightlife in the country as not just as a spectacle but a sanctuary, guided by inclusivity, empowerment, and enduring solidarity. 

Curated by Gaysi Family | Illustration by Typography visuals 

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