Ocuupation - sound and light system proprietor
It’s Attukal Pongala today. An event all of us in this field look forward to every year. With residents’ associations and pourasamithis celebrating it in a big way with annadanam (serving of food) and providing other facilities for the devotees, we are in demand during this time of the year. In fact, the festival committees contact us months in advance and my firm, Kathir Sounds at Peyadu, my native place, has been associated with the festivities for long.
I keep changing my clients every year. This year I am providing fancy lights and sound system to an area near Enchakkal Junction and at Pappanamcode. For the fete, we provide tube lights, illumination and sound system, which include the microphones and box speakers.
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Now that the District Collector has announced that there will be special squads to check noise pollution, we are being careful about the speakers we use and the distance between the speakers. As you know, we all use box speakers, that too the small ones; horn loudspeakers aren’t used anymore.
My firm is 25 years old. It is a family business started by my father’s brother, Prabhakaran. It was then called Prince Sound. When I took over the business six years ago, I named it Kathir, after my father Kathiresan who is no more. I have studied till class 10 and as a child I was enamoured by the sound systems, allied arrangements, speakers and the technology behind it. This is one area that I wanted to work in since I had seen many of my family members working in the same field.
Business has grown by leaps and bounds over the years because festivals such as Attukal Pongala aren’t small events any more. There is no dearth of such big events, which results in plenty of opportunities for people like us. There was a time when there were hardly four or five boxes at my house. Now you would find nearly 150, which shows that how much our business has grown.
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It is the temple festival season from December to April when we do maximum business. Otherwise I get work during church fetes, public meetings, stage events and huge rallies. We also provide the audio CDs to be played at various events. I have some 30-odd CDs of Attukal Pongala alone, in addition to volumes of devotional and film songs.
On the whole, I have enough work throughout the year. However, I get little time to relax. This field has immense competition because if you quote Rs. 20,000 for a work, there are people who are ready to do the same for a lesser amount. Another factor is the availability of labourers on time. For Attukal Pongala, I shell out Rs. 900 per day for them. Entire work, which include installing the illumination, fitting the tube lights, speakers and other things and, later, removing the same after the festival take at least three or four days, or sometimes even more depending on the area we have to cover. Often, after putting in a couple of days’ work, many of them fail to turn up which eventually leads to a lot of tension. Also, there is little profit left after disbursing the labour charges and meeting other expenses.
However, amidst all the tension, I am happy that I am able to look after my family comprising wife Saritha and sons Jyothish and Jitheesh quite well. I am 39 now and hope to continue this as long as I can. I am also running a catering business which is going smooth.
(A weekly column on men and women who make Thiruvananthapuram what it is)