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Anjali Prayag

As Touchbass 2004, India's only corporate music festival, showed recently, more and more Indian corporate workers are humming and rocking to beat their Monday morning blues away.

It's been a hard day's night..."

This Beatles number could well be the theme song for India Inc today. If it's a BPO employee humming, it could well be a hard night's day. And as Touchbass 2004, India's only corporate music festival, showed last week, more and more Indian corporate workers are humming and rocking to beat their Monday morning blues away.

Last weekend, Bangalore-based Wishbone Music brought together 10 corporate bands in Bangalore for a music festival. And employees from Wipro, ICICI OneSource, HP, Madura Garments, iSeva Systems, Agere Systems, Euro RSCG, Intel and Talisma took a break from work to belt out some popular numbers. The fare was vast — old Hindi songs, with some new ones too, rock, fusion, Indipop, ghazals, and the like. But all of it was done in a spirit alien to the modern corporate world: totally non-competitive.

Says Chris Avinash, an MBA, who gave up a corporate career to start Wishbone, "This talent hunt business in companies is HR-driven. I find that in BPOs and in IT companies, employees are encouraged to develop a passion to drive away stress." And of course, the `Thank God It's Friday' parties in IT companies helped those who were musically inclined to get together and form company bands. Companies encouraged employees to take up interesting pastimes to usher in a relaxed atmosphere at workplace.

"The IT industry believes it needs this kind of breaks because of the high-pressure lives the employees lead." Touchbass was conceived in 2002 when Avinash saw that several corporate bands had sprung up in Bangalore. Interestingly, this year, Touchbass had a couple of non-IT companies participating in the event as well. The first Touchbass had six bands; the next year there were eight and this year there were 10. "We had to turn away a couple of them as they registered themselves too late," he says.

Apart from the fact that the numbers are increasing, he feels the standards are also improving year on year. Kapil Bellubi and Nagendar Yenamandra of Hewlett Packard (HP) who are participating in the fest for the second year in a row agree that the `levels are higher now than last year.' Bellubi, a guitarist, terms this as a welcome break from the monotony of a call centre job. The HP band, called Wind Tunnel Road (named after the road where the call centre is located) comprises seven members. "We play both fusion music and our own compositions," says Yenamandra, the band's percussionist.

Pradeep Gomez, another call centre employee gushes, "The experience has been awesome. This is a real stress buster for BPO employees." Gomez who has been with ICICI OneSource for three and a half years recalls his schooldays and likens this event to each student trying to project his or her school in the best possible light. He's the vocalist and guitarist for Runes, the ICICI band. "This is a good change for us," says Sapna Gnanakan of iSeva Systems, who hails from a family of singers and musicians. As a BPO employee, she has to juggle her time between shifts to practise, and on most of the days she practises between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.

How encouraging are companies when it comes to investing time and money in their employees' talent? This is important considering that this investment does not really contribute to the bottomline. All the companies have sponsored the participation fee, which is something like Rs 2,000 for a solo performance and Rs 5,000 for a band. Bellubi and Yenamandra, the HP duo, say that the company has been very supportive of their activities. Gomez says that though most of the practice is post-shift, the company did allow the band members to get into the same shift to enable them to practise.

Says Manek Kaushal of Wipro Technologies, "Everyday, I reach home by 8.30 pm and therefore I can only practise before sleeping." He belongs to No Klue, the Indian music band at Wipro, and gave three solo numbers this year. He was with his school band and has participated in several musical events in the past. He says Wipro has provided the band with the basic equipment, which has been `pretty useful.'

Apart from the Indian band, Wipro Technologies also has a Western music group. Trad Scabrous - meaning traditionally rough - is a rock band playing music of the 1970s and the 1980s. Says Rajesh Uttanji of Wipro, who plays for Trad Scabrous, "Most of the times we practise at office after work. We're really happy to meet up then because this is a great stress-reliever for all of us."

Anil Kakde, another Wiproiite, believes that it is their love for music that has brought them together. "We're the initiators of rock music at Wipro and give about five to six performances every year," he says proudly.

Adds Suchitralatha, Consultant, Design Administration, Madura Garments, "We had been working on building a good team for sometime now, and now Touchbass has given us the right opportunity to present ourselves." According to Avinash, all the 50-plus participants seemed to echo the same sentiment: "I can't let my school (read company') down."

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