From Bangalore to Bombay, Chennai to Chandigarh, India has seen an incredible insurgence of skateboarders. Whether as travellers on skate pilgrimages, or lo- cals building grassroots collectives, these riders are taking the country by storm, giving birth to a rich culture with DIY at its heart. We wanted a glimpse into the soul of this movement, and caught up with two of its most exciting driving forces.
Interview by Oisín Tammas
Holystoked
Abhishek (a.k.a. Shakenbake) co-founded Holystoked – India’s first skateboard collective – back in 2011 with the simple goal of promoting skateboarding in India. It grew fast. Gaining momentum, not only through producing boards and teaching kids, but by building numerous skateparks all over the country. Today Holystoked is inspiring young men and women in India to spend their time skateboarding, and has helped people like Atita Verghese kickstart a life in the culture more globally. We’ll get to her in a moment, but first…
…that sounds like a fun job, Shake!
Abhishek: Yeah, these days I just run around trying to convince people to build skateparks in their city because its “so awesome”. That is pretty much the pitch. If that doesn’t work, I mention the amazing impact it has on the community in the area.
When you’re not travelling around building parks, where do you call home?
I live in Bangalore, just down the road from the DIY we built here. I’m about to open a skate shop here, so I’ll be more localised soon.
You grew up in India?
I grew up all over the place. My dad had a job that kept him moving around a lot, so I ended up living in Lucknow, New Delhi, Trivandrum, Nigeria, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, and then finally Bangalore where I lived in a residential school. All the moving around resulted in me not really becoming too attached to any place specifically. It gave me the chance to see how life could be outside of my country, just because that’s what I was getting groomed for. All kids born in the early 80s in India were told to study hard, get into a good college (here college means you need to study engineering, law or medicine as those are considered the only respectable careers) and then have a family and work till you die. So after law school I kind of realised that my life couldn’t really be exciting if that is what I did. Lucky I met my friends who I started to skate with and started Holystoked with, better late than never is what I say.
When did you first encounter skateboarding?
I first got a skateboard in ‘97 after watching the Back to the Future movies. But I broke that board and I didn’t really have anyone to skate with, so I kind of gave it up. I went to Singapore around the same time and saw a bunch of dudes flipping down a three stair. I remember thinking they obviously have some sort of special glue shoes! After that, I pretty much didn’t see a skateboard again until I finished law school and started working. Skateboarding saved me from a boring life. I look back now and really kick myself for not taking it up more seriously when I was younger. I didn’t really skate until I was 25 years old, once I realised my goal in life was to not get stuck in some dull career. In 2009, my friend Poorna bought a skateboard in Dubai, and so we started meeting up near my house to skate. I think we had a crew of four, and it really felt like something else this time. I’ve since quit my job to work on Holystoked with that crew, which is much larger now.
Tell me how you and your crew birthed Holystoked?
After I quit my job to just skate, I was desperately trying to figure out my future. I mean, I was 25 with degrees in law and animation. I had career options. But I convinced my buddies to join me in unemployment and to do something together instead. If it would involve skateboarding, they didn’t need much convincing. We first planned to start a magazine, then a shop, then have our own board brand, then to build skateparks. We were planning to build a park when we met Arne Hillerns and Robin Höning from the 2er crew in Hannover. They were taking a trip through India and met up with me in Bangalore. They had just done the first DIY builder’s jam with Levi’s Skateboarding, and they had contacts to make it happen again in Bangalore. I think it was actually sometime during that build that Arne birthed his brain child – Make Life Skate Life.
So that was the spark that ignited the project?
After the Bangalore project, Make Life Skate Life was on its way, and so was Holystoked. We went on to try and replicate the idea in other places. We built a mini-ramp in Hampi next to the bowl the 2er guys had built.
“The horrible truth is that he beat his wife in front of us, he assaulted skaters at the park, intimidated all the local kids. He wanted to scare us away from the skatepark.”
Then we built a small park in Goa, which we have continued to expand in the past years. Vizag got a mini ramp, we put one on the beach in Chennai. And all these were built with funds raised online or through parties we threw, and just general good will from good people.
What has been the impact of these projects?
It always depends on who stays around the spot and promotes the scene there. Goa has been pretty well used, and some cool stuff came out of Chennai. One local girl named Kamali got quite famous thanks to Jamie Thomas visiting the spot and posting some pics of her skating the ramp. She is now in the new Vans video, Girls Skate India, with Atita Verghese. We were part of the build for the Janwar Castle skatepark. This was probably the hardest build ever because of the terrible conditions, but we soldiered through it and it probably has had the best impact. It has been highly publicised, it’s helped break down social barriers in the community there. That inspired me to start 100Ramps last year with my friend Darius, for building more professional skateparks. We built the Wallride Skatepark in Hyderabad last year, and this year we’ll build another park in Banga- lore inside a building complex.
I heard about this! The first Banga- lore park – that started it all – was closed in the end, right?
Yeah. There was this lawyer who lived next door. When we started building he was fine with the skatepark being next to his house because he thought that it would just be foreigners who would use it. Once the build was completed it was the obvious that the kids from the shanties around the area would be skating there, and there were so many of them that we started to get groups of volunteers to organise other stuff like art and English classes so that they could learn while they skated, and it would disperse the crowd a bit so you could actually get a run in.
Sounds like a pretty amazing initiative.
Well, the lawyer next door couldn’t bear these kids having fun, I guess. He asked us to stop allowing poor kids in the park, which would defeat the purpose of us building the thing in the first place. We fought back, but it became an ego battle. He started to bribe cops to come onto our property to arrest skaters. When we tried to go to the police station to protest, he bribed the district inspector, and all of a sudden we were on his shit list too. He then bribed the municipality so they started to give us legal notices on illegal activities we were conducting on the property. So we went to court. He also filed a complaint of intimidation and violent assault against Poorna for apparently assaulting his wife.
He got away with all of that?
This shit works in India. If you have money to throw at people, you can do what you want. Incidentally, that assault case is still not over because his wife hasn’t ever come to court for cross examination. So Poorna still makes trips to the district court every few months, and it has been rescheduled for four years now. Like I said, if you have money in India you can indefinitely delay. The horrible truth is that he beat his wife in front of us, he assaulted skaters at the park, intimidated all the local kids. He wanted to scare us away from the skatepark. In the end we decided to leave and build a new park. It’s quite far from the old one, but the real shame is that the kids in that area have lost touch with us.
I guess all you can do is hope that the scene grows and pulls them back in again.
Yeah, the scene isn’t big, compared to the size of India’s population. The number of skaters is minuscule, but there are small groups all over the country who are chipping away with their boards.
Who are some of the other key players in Indian skateboarding?
There are true skate crews, people trying to make a quick buck, and then the suits. Some projects are getting a little corporate, and I feel that in a scene as fresh as India’s, we have a chance to keep the suits and the opportunists at arm’s length. For all the skaters out there with the same goal as us – just promoting skate- boarding – I have absolute love and respect. There is the Active8 skate shop which is great at supporting skaters, and provides some good gear. There is Nick Smith from the UK, he built the first ever skatepark here in India, and started a company here. Then there’s Atita, with her Girls Skate India project, which I hope will become more of an Indian movement.
Girls Skate India
She’s surfed the Goan coast, cruised the streets of Bangalore; wherever she goes, Atita Verghese’s can-do attitude borders on punk. From her first en- counter with skateboarding, she was hooked. Until she was able to get her own board, she could be found at her local park, nabbing rides off the guys when they were just sitting around. Today she’s the first woman pro skater in the country, has collaborated with Holystoked to teach and build parks, and is head of Girl Skate India – a platform that empowers both girls and boys to con- sider a life in skateboarding. With the backing of Vans, she travels the world as something of a spokesperson for Indian skateboarding, but always finds time to remember her roots.
Tell us a bit about how skateboarding first came into your life?
Atita: Well, Nick Smith built the Play Arena Skate Park, one of the only parks in India back then. He used to go there all the time, and so one day I tagged along with him. Seeing the freedom, the community, the weird shit that came with skateboarding gave me an amazing feeling. It was that feeling that helped me feel closer to home personally, now I saw what was going on with skate- boarding.
Was it tougher to do things like skate- boarding as a girl?
I wasn’t treated differently at home. I could do anything I wanted, just like my boy cousins. But in school and other places outside of home, there were biases. I feel like society in general here just has these set standards and expectations of what it means to be a girl. It kind of sucks if you’re different and don’t fit into that. But it’s also fun because you get to show people a different perspective. So yeah, generally I did eat more shit about misbehaving. I got bullied by boys in my school for being different. I once got randomly taken, hands held behind my back and just punched in the stomach for a reason that is still unknown to me. Kids are weird. Life goes on. Skateboarding helped.
How has skateboarding developed in India in your time involved?
The first few spots were built by Erik Reboul, a resident of Auroville in 2001. Later on, Nick Smith came in with the Jungle Bowl in Goa and a few other spots around India have sprung up since thanks to him. The 2er crew from Germany, Make Life Skate Life, Alis, The Community Collective, they’ve all added more parks and spots and really fueled the locals with a desire to keep building. That’s what kickstarted Holystoked and 100 Ramps building so much, and other crews around India have started their own DIY initiatives. I think everyone is pioneering and giving back to skateboarding the way skateboarding has given to us. Taking things to the next level is crucial for our community here.
It seems people really take matters into their own hands to build the Indian scene?
Yes, definitely. But companies like Vans and Adidas have started to fund skateboarding in India too. It means there is actually support for skateboarders, and obvious- ly that gives the community the necessary financial kick.
Tell us about how you got involved with Vans?
[Laughs] I was just minding my own business, skating, and my friend Darius comes up to me with the idea of getting Vans to sponsor me. He even went and met with them on my behalf. I didn’t really think anything was going to happen, but then two years later I got called to the office and told they wanted to start a Vans India team. They had me in mind to be their first rider.
“I once got randomly taken, hands held behind my back and just punched in the stomach for a reason that is still unknown to me. Kids are weird”
I didn’t really believe it at first. I thought it was sick they wanted a chick to be their first team rider. Some people call it good marketing, but I look at it as progression. The marketing head is super supportive of the girls skate scene. She’s awesome.
That’s rad. And it’s made you one of the most recognisable faces to come from India!
Yeah, and I’ve also had a lot of support from Vans for personal projects, like Girls Skate India – the female crew I started over here. Vans sponsored a build we did on the Girl Skate India Tour Vol. 2, and a few workshops along the way. I landed a campaign with them that kickstarted a worldwide series of girls skate events, I got to travel a lot, sit on a panel discussion and meet some amazing people in skateboarding. It’s super crazy. I never pictured any of this. And it’s only the beginning.
In all that travelling and experience, what’s one thing the Western skate community is missing?
More inclusion of women and minorities in the industry. That’s already happening in so many ways with more companies shining the light, but we need more!
And India? What’s still left to achieve?
More skateparks! We need government and private funding towards facilities. Now that it’s in the Olympics, I don’t see why that would be hard to do. Indians kinda’ have this mentality that nothing is worth pursuing if there are no awards to be won. The more skateparks, the more skaters, the bigger the scene.
