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Bengali Meme Group Puts Desi Twist on Harlem Shake in Jackson Heights

JACKSON HEIGHTS — For at least one day, it was the "Little India Shake."

A new video by the group Bengali Memes — who last year performed in a Bengali Gangnam Style flash mob — depicts a crowd in Jackson Heights' 37th Road Plaza on Monday performing the viral "Harlem Shake" dance.

Like all of the parody videos of its kind, the Bengali Memes video starts with a lone masked man dancing while others sitting and standing around him seemingly don't notice.

Then as the video continues and the beat drops, the scene cuts to dozens of people wildly dancing. Like the Gangnam Style video, the "Harlem Shake - Desi Edition" features South Asian clothing like the lungi and the sari, but also features a man in a banana costume and a shirtless man sitting on someone's shoulders.

The song, which is virtually unrelated to the 1980s Harlem dance move, was released in May, but gained notoriety over the last month after a series of parody videos featuring people in crazy costumes dancing to the song were uploaded to YouTube.

As of last week, more than 4,000 parody videos were being uploaded to the site daily, according to a YouTube blog post.