New Delhi, Oct. 11 -- A couple of times a year, the West Bengal village of Bhawanichak becomes the site of a very curious gathering. For one weekend, 40-odd trucks and tempos park themselves haphazardly on a patch of scrubby grassland next to verdant paddy fields. Each vehicle is loaded with a Frankenstein monster of a sound-system-stacks of home-built bass-bins, giant banks of techni-colour horns, leaning speaker-towers of Pisa lashed into position with jute ropes.

A crowd of young men-and it's almost exclusively men-wanders between the different "DJ boxes", each playing minimal bass tones and sirens at oppressive, tinnitus-inducing volume. Percussion, when it's present, comes in at gabba warp-speed, starting at 200bpm and sprinting upw...