City-based singer teaches YouTube gen the fun of slokas

The idea came up when Jaya Kumar (60) was trying to engage her three-year-old granddaughter with slokas. She found her inadvertently turning to videos of popular rhymes like ‘Wheels on the Bus Go Round’. She decided to make the slokas lively and not an exercise where one sat upright with closed eyes. 

“The idea was to make the slokas fun and colourful. It was not for making them learn it, but to get them to listen to the Sanskrit words,” she said After she came out with the simple tunes for the slokas, which garnered interest from across, when her granddaughter belted them out at a gathering, the project took off. R Chandrasekhar, a musician, came up with lively tunes, and Suriya Narayanan and Sara Divya Mohan of The Studio Madras conjured up the fun visuals to go with the songs.

Jaya’s son Viraj and daughter Divya, also trained singers lent their touch with vocals. The short videos comprise slokas like Ya Devi, Mooshika vahana, Adilakshmi, Achutham Keshavan, etc., set in popular ragas like Hamsadhwani and Kalyani. The links to the videos went live with their formal launch, presided over by musician Anil Srinivasan, in the city on Wednesday.

“My connection with slokas goes back to my childhood. These slokas gave me a sense of peace during times of anxiety. Today’s children are stressed a lot, and these would benefit them,” Jaya said.

Hailing from a family of artistes, Jaya is trained both in Hindustani and Carnatic music. “This is a non-commercial venture that found an ideal meeting point with music and slokas for me,” she added.