Drummer from Jafferkhanpet survives lockdown through classes from unexpected quarters

B. Sridhar points out that an effort to build an online presence over the last four years is helping him tide over this crisis

Within unorganised employment structures, work is usually found via the jungle telegraph. Availability of projects is informally shared through conversations not necessarily work-related. A crisis led B. Sridhar, a drummer, to realise the limitations of running a career by the bush telegraph, and he began to actively cultivate a presence on formal channels. Sridhar states that this continuing exercise is helping him during this pandemic.

“I suffered immensely on account of the 2015 Chennai floods,” begins Sridhar, a resident of Jafferkhanpet, part of the region from here poignant flood stories emerged.

“On the morning of December 2, we had to abandon our rented ground-floor house on Gnanamani Street, already three feet below road level, as it came under the flood waters, which rose to the first floor. We had moved to the second floor of building belonging to someone known to us. My wife Lakshmi was pregnant and her due date was December 16, but as luck would have it, she developed birth pangs around midnight, and through a boat and a jeep, which stalled mid-way, and another boat, we reached her to the hospital. My son Mayukh Sridhar was born on December 3, 2015. The house was kept locked for 10 days, and my entire drum kit — two drum sets, two electronic pads, and djembe, triple-congo and cajon drums — was utterly wrecked. Not one set of clothes could be salvaged from the wrecked house,” Sridhar relates how he was forced to start all over again, from the scratch.

Sridhar is also adept at “inside painting”, and had paintings done on the inside of 1,000 bottles, an effort that fetched him recognition from Tamil Nadu Book of Records. (He has also created records for marathon drumming feats, including “44-hour non-stop drumming done blind-folded to promote the cause of eye donation”.

“A whole body of work was lost due to the floods; I could save only one bottle with 181 images painted on the inside,” rues Sridhar.

In the months after the floods, work dried up.

“Inexplicably, after the floods, the call-up from groups I worked with did not happen,” says Sridhar. “Fortunately, I got an opportunity to go on a concert tour to London, in March and October 2016, with the support of friends,” relates Sridhar, adding that this exposure was an eye-opener. “I realised I should be active online, and also increase my presence on social media. I started online classes, in addition to having the regular ones. Though I had a YouTube channel, until then I would post videos desultorily. Now, on an average, I post at least two videos of the drums covers I do, every month. During the lockdown period, I am averaging four drums cover videos every week.”

Sridhar explains how having a wider reach through technology is helping him now. “I have a few students in the United Kingdom, Canada, United States and Australia that I take online classes. These are Indians and Sri Lankan Tamils living in these countries, and I have found them since 2016, after I started taking conscious efforts to build my reach through online platforms. These overseas students constitute a very small section of my overall students. During the lockdown, these students are trying to help me by taking up more online classes with me than usual so that I am able to tackle the inevitable financial difficulty resulting from the crisis. Regular classes have obviously stopped due to the need for social distancing.”