Crooning with a K

KTV as an entertainment phenomenon gives Ekta Kapoor’s K-serials a run for their money. And no, KTV is not a television channel (naive as it may seem, Kalanidhi Maran hasn’t spread his wings to China yet and Rajinikanth hasn’t taken over either!) According to Wikipedia it’s Karaoke TV and has its origins in Japan. 

 The Chinese are obsessed with KTV’s .  And for lack of creativity, all of them are called KTV. It’s like adding ‘Bar & Restaurant’ to most eat out joints in Kerala. My favourite one being the Gaylord’s Bar and Restaurant. I suppose it would be imperative to my Mallu brethren to know whether it serves alcohol or not!

 Melody KTV is one of the most popular in Beijing.  Well there is a reason why my Chinese friends did not take me there. My singing is far from melodious!  So I had to be content with Uranus KTV. Not that it made a difference to me. I was after all going to a karaoke bar that was playing Chinese music, so the cheaper the better, I thought.  Well to add to my disbelief, they actually did play English music and I was asked to, no, forced to sing. The crowd favourite was” Everybody” by Backstreet Boys. The last time I heard it was in high school.

After the first couple of lines my friends decided to put themselves out of their misery and asked for the mike to be passed on.  Serves them right for not heeding to my husband’s advice on my disastrous singing skills!

But KTV as a phenomenon is fascinating not because I have not witnessed such a thing in India. But because of the sheer size and scale and even opulence of some of these operations! They are restaurants, bars, pimping joints and family hangouts all rolled into one. And they are open for business till about 7 in the morning.  

What often renders me speechless is the sheer size of these things. They usually cover about three or four floors and have these massive chandeliers that are probably as expensive as the real estate itself. These places are then divided into smaller rooms and you pay for a room depending on the size of your group. Some of these rooms are bigger than whole houses in Mumbai!

These huge buildings with multi-coloured neon lights are hard to miss.  Beijing’s full of them. Some of these places remind you of Paharganj in the night, especially the tacky neon lights and obvious underground illegal activities.  Some places have these huge LED display screens at their reception which is usually displaying these tacky, hypnotic patterns that annoy me no end. It’s like Pink Floyd meets Annu Mallik. So you walk into a KTV and pay for a sound-proof room which usually consists of a 40 -50 inch LCD screen and a two large sofas and a table and a funky touch-screen console which lets you play your songs.

And singing is the not the only thing that happens in these places. Some of them are known to be just fronts for high profile pimping. Of course, if you are with a mixed gender group then you are unlikely to ask for these services. But even the high profile ones have girls on hire. They sing with you, flirt with you and for a few hundred yuan more, are willing to oblige even more. So boys, if you are on a trip to China ALONE, you know what to do. There are also two kinds of KTVs. Ones which you can take your girlfriend to and ones you won’t! I guess sound proofed private rooms have their benefits.

As for us, we picked our poison and sang the night way. A couple of beers down my singing voice came out. Though I doubt I’ll get invited for karaoke again! Ever.