The other ‘Johnson Master’ of Kerala 

2023 marked an unexpected turn in George V V aka Johnson Master’s life — a golden year, as he calls it. “I felt the music inside again,” he says, standing under the faded awning of his cycle shop in Amaravathi, Fort Kochi. “Like it never left.”

That year, on a whim, he and a few old dance friends — including one endearingly nicknamed “Break Auntie” — took out their old cycles and rode into the heart of Fort Kochi. They didn’t have a plan. Just music and muscle memory.

They danced. On pavements. At junctions. Outside cafés. “We didn’t ask for a stage,” he smiles. “We made one.”

What began as a casual act of reclaiming their past quickly caught on. Passersby clapped. Some joined. Others simply watched, confused and charmed. Within weeks, it became routine. 

Soon, the energy snowballed into something larger: a free, open-air Zumba class. “We started with ten people. Before we knew it, there were over 40,” says Johnson, whose name is highlighted in our interactions with almost every breakdancer of ‘old Kochi’.   

Today, that class continues — attracting everyone from college students to retirees, all drawn to Johnson’s raw, joyful spirit.

And even now, in his late sixties, he travels to local schools for competitions, choreographing routines, mentoring children, and dancing like time has no claim over him. “No illness, no money problem, nothing can stop me,” he says. “Dance is in my blood.”

Back in the 1980s, breakdance was barely a whisper in India — let alone in Kerala. But something about the electric footwork and acrobatic flow of the genre spoke to Johnson, even before he had seen it.

“It was a Gulf-returnee who showed me a tape,” he recalls. “Michael Jackson. Then a breakdance movie. We didn’t even know what the steps were called. But we tried everything.”

With a crew of teenage friends, Johnson formed one of Kochi’s earliest breakdance groups. They had no formal training, no imported sneakers. What they had was passion, pavement, and pockets of stolen time.

“We danced under streetlights, at temple courtyards, near the beach. We didn’t need sound systems — we had each other’s beats.”

The iconic ‘Breakdance’ album and Kamal Haasan’s moves in ‘Sakalakala Vallavan’ were their go-to for josh. “We copied. We improvised. We invented,” says Johnson.  

They won local competitions. They became fixtures in Fort Kochi’s club circuit. But Johnson’s contribution didn’t end at performance.

He became a teacher. Unpaid, often uncredited. “I used to teach in Kalabhavan. I just loved sharing what I knew,” he says.

Among his early students were names that would go on to shape Malayalam cinema — Soubin Shahir, Vinayakan, and Vineeth among them.