nearly 300 people gathered in a club on the night of june 13 during the lockdown to hold a dj party named lalettan night the party was led by professional disc jockey savio mendez and attended by musician deepak dev savyo kept his audience entertained for over two hours banging out a seemingly endless blend of around 35 songs exclusively from mohanlals hit movies dev chatted with the audience and shared his experience in the music industry most of the audience enjoyed the vibe of music and fun and were happy that they got a chance to hear as well as participate in conversations with famous people that too from the safety of their homesthe dj night happened virtually on clubhouse the voicebased social networking app where there are virtual rooms and clubs full of people talkingall open so you can hop in and out something akin to a live freeflowing podcast but which also allows you to speakthe loud malayali club which hosted the dj party was one among the thousands of clubs on clubhouse that allows you to meet with friends and new peopleto tell stories have causal chats ask questions debate and learn and it was launched at a time when people were cooped up in their homes suffering lockdown lonelinessclubhouse developed by usbased alpha exploration co was launched on ios in march last year amid the lockdown when people started mandatorily staying at home the invitationonly app was launched on the android platform in india a month ago and now the country features among the top markets for clubhouse the app has exploded in popularity in kerala too where irrespective of age and interests people drop in for unconstrained conversationsbesides listening to the conversations in each room you can also chime in provided the moderator of that room allows you to speak or you can join together with a friend and create your own chatroomwhat makes the app different from other social media platforms is its focus on social audio there are no video livestreams no texts and no picturesjust people talking and exchanging ideas in persondeepak dev said the dj night was only a simple way of experimenting with the app dj savyo asked me to spend just 10 minutes in the room but i ended up spending more than one hour i have been chatting up with techies who work in the music industry in clubhouse but the dj night was altogether a different experience it suddenly cheers us up as we have so many people around us to talk and have fun amid the pandemic dev saidthe ongoing euro 2020 and copa america tournaments led to the creation of scores of malayali rooms like football malayalam and football kerala where soccer lovers spend their time throughout the night while watching the matchesone of the biggest misses amid the pandemic is the fun i had watching football with friends where we cheer for and fight over our favourite teams and players now every night