Sridhar is stacking up records

CHENNAI: When he was in school, he wanted to tie a rope to an airplane and drag it with his hands. He then thought about dragging a bus with his teeth. Though both of these efforts were only distant dreams and he could never do them, for B Sridhar, his thirst to do the impossible never ceased. Popularly known as Drums Sridhar (He holds the record in the India Book of Records for drumming for 24 hours continuously), he says, “I have never wanted to be one in a crowd, I want to stand out.” On March 3, he was awarded with another certificate from the India Book of Records that stated he had achieved yet another record. He was the first person to stack 100 Horlicks bottles and paint an image over them. “I have always been interested in painting within bottles. What started off as painting within drinking glasses has now given me this record,” says Sridhar. All of Sridhar’s bottles have a certain pattern to them. The usually carry images of national leaders. Does he have a reason? “For 100 of my bottles, I picked Thiruvalluvar as the theme because that is one form that everyone can identify, even worldwide. If I had picked someone or something else and nobody had recognised it, there would be no meaning in doing the painting,” he explains, and adds, “I have also painted tribute bottles to the victims of the Twin Tower attack and the Gujarat riots.” If painting within wide-necked Horlicks bottles seems difficult (He explains that he has to paint the image upside down to make it right when the bottle is stacked), Sridhar decided to take it up a notch. “I wanted a bigger challenge, so I began painting inside old alcohol bottles, where the neck is narrow, only a finger can fit inside,” he says. Initially, it took him over three days to paint one bottle, but once he mastered it, it took him a mere couple of hours. “I then thought of painting 100 images within the same bottle,” he informs and goes on, “I then decided that I would paint as many images as the bottle would hold,” adding that his bottle with 180 images is another feat that has been recorded in the India Book of Records. Having painted over 1,000 bottles till date, Sridhar says that he has mastered not only techniques of inserting and controlling a normal paint brush inside the bottle, but also to correct errors. “Initially, I would completely wash off the bottle if something went wrong, but now, I can manage to use a paint brush to erase just the mistake,” he explains. Sridhar has a mission, “I want to host an exhibition of all my bottles and hold an auction. I will donate the proceeds to the victims of the Thane cyclone.”