Rahul Bhagat, the first-ever winner of India’s first hip-hop dance reality show, Hip Hop India, gets candid with The Pioneer, sharing his feelings on emerging as the winner, his journey from Gully Se Glory Tak, and more.
Tejal Sinha
American rapper Doug E. Fresh once said, ‘Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level, and to make a change.’ No doubt, hip-hop has gained immense popularity of late. But one should not miss out on crediting Amazon Mini TV’s Hip Hop India, which recently concluded the show after 7 weeks of fierce competition and electrifying performances.
India’s first-ever hip-hop-based dance reality show has created a new benchmark in itself and has a winner whose journey is no less than an inspiration. Yes, Ranchi’s Rahul Bhagat, the one who began dancing when he was just in his fourth grade, has emerged as the first-ever winner of the dance reality show. Well, doesn’t that feel anything less than being proud when you have a ‘first-ever’ name before one’s name? The feelings were the same, maybe even more so, for him as we connected with him over a video interview. “This was the first hip-hop based dance reality show, and winning the first show is a huge thing,” enthused Rahul, who feels grateful that now people remember and know him. “For me, the show was unique because it had underground and commercial dancers one. Earlier, I was only commercial; I used to practice and then went underground. I felt the show was made for me alone. I had the thought that ‘mai nahi jeetunga toh kaun jeetega’ and I really wanted to win the show, and now I’ve won the show, joh sochke gaya tha,” he added.
The journey of ‘Gully Se Glory Tak’ started in the most ‘unreal’ way for him—something he never knew would happen to him. He explained to us, “I feel like my journey just kept on going. I went to the show, got selected, and my performance started getting better. I just felt like I kept getting it, and I had done a lot of hard work. It’s not that I was just getting it. I was practicing a lot, and sometimes it happens when luck and hard work happen at the same time.”
The way Rahul has won the hearts, not only of the audiences but also of the judges, Remo D’ Souza and Nora Fatehi. Getting comments from two of the biggest dance icons we have in the industry was no less than a dream come true. “Nora ma’am used to tell me she loved my movements, like when I used to do a wave, and she used to notice that she used to love that. Even I love waving, and when she told me in fact in the first episode, I felt that okay, meri baatein unn tak pahunch gayi hai (my words have reached them). Every time that I used to do this, I knew that I had to pass it on to other people as well,””recalled the talented performer, for whom Remo has forever been an idol, and getting a standing ovation from him was more like ‘game over’ for him.
Initially, Rahul was so involved in his dance that he kept going in-depth with it to learn more and more. It was during the pandemic that he felt things started changing for him, and he began taking it seriously. So much so that, every time there were any posters of workshops or international workshops that were happening, he himself made sure to approach them and understand them well. And once he started understanding, he got the show, and the show gave him immense confidence.
As we went ahead with the interesting talk, he shared how there was a time when he used to, in fact, ‘die to be a part’ of the reality shows, “I used to do an okayish kind of dance, and when I used to see these reality shows, I used to feel like, ‘Okay, now it might not have been’ and it was then that I felt okay, you might not be unique, and how would you get selected then? So I gave myself some time, learned from people, danced in front of my mom, with my friends on the roads and parks, and used to go and learn from people in Delhi and Kolkata. Later, when I got the show, people would have understood how big the show was, and coming from there and standing up with such great contestants, they were all unique, and in front of them, it was like I needed to perform in front of them. The journey started in a normal way with practice and struggle, but here it’s a different world. It just felt like an unreal journey. So after the ‘Gully Se Glory Tak’, when you come back to Gully, you’d feel you’ve got something; people would recognise you. The feeling is just inexpressable,” he gushes with great enthusiasm, for whom his family, friends, and teachers have greatly supported him. But to him, the only thing that bothered him was ‘rejection’. “When I used to get rejected, it used to hit my ego, and I used to not see that maybe there was something wrong with the way I was doing it. But when I accepted that rejection is only the main point, and if you cross it, you’ll reach wherever you want to, I made rejection my strength, and that gave me the power, and it kept upgrading. It was the rejection that made me strong,” shares Rahul, who feels his mom has been the biggest support; she has always loved seeing him dance. Seeing him dance in a reality show while holding the trophy could be the ‘proudest’ moment ever. Well, it is for us too!
Rahul feels that now, with a show like Hip Hop India, people will know the true meaning of hip-hop, which is not just about dancing!