Imagine this for a second: a group of complete strangers sitting in a circle, hands tapping on drums, the beats slowly starting to match, one following the other. No one’s talking, but somehow everyone’s connected. There’s no stage, no audience. Just people playing, listening, smiling, getting lost in the rhythm.

In a city like Bengaluru, where people come from everywhere and life moves fast, finding that kind of simple connection isn’t always easy. Work keeps you busy, weekends fly by, and before you know it, months pass without meeting anyone new.

That’s exactly where Gaurav Gupta found himself not too long ago — in a new city, feeling a little lost, and looking for a way to feel a bit more at home. What started as his small idea to fight that loneliness has today grown into ‘Bangalore Drums Collective’, a space where people come together, pick up an instrument, and find an easy way to connect.

‘The new city made me feel lonely’

For Gaurav Gupta, a 40-year-old working at Infosys, Bangalore Drums Collective didn’t start because of some lifelong love for percussion. It started because he was feeling lonely.

“When I moved to Bengaluru in 2022, especially after living all of my life in Mumbai for work, I started feeling very lonely,” Gaurav says. He was used to Mumbai’s easy camaraderie, but Bengaluru felt different. “The city’s social landscape was kind of conservative.”

Trying to make friends outside of work wasn’t easy. “And how many times in a week will you go out and go clubbing, eating, drinking?” he says. After a while, even the usual ways of socialising didn’t help.

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The loneliness slowly crept in. “Call it depression, call it anxiety, call it feeling sad, I started to feel that,” he admits. “And this was happening to me while I was supposed to feel settled in life.”

Looking for a way........

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