Is your professor as cool as P R Jeyakrishnan? The professor, who teaches mechanical engineering at a private college in Coimbatore, has taken the internet by storm with his singing and ‘Don’t care attitude’.
The professor is quite the ‘celebrity’ in his college owing to his internet fame and his digital coolness quotient. Students swarm to him to take a selfie with him. Don’t believe us? Watch this:
Video by Aravindh
Besides teaching, he spends the rest of the time singing and recording popular songs, in Tamil, English, Hindi and even Spanish, and shares the videos on his YouTube channel.
His YouTube channel Rengasamy Jeyakrishnan has over 4,000 subscribers with hundreds of collaborations with different singers transcending language and genre.
Speaking to TNM, Jeyakrishnan says, “People are very uptight these days. They need to ease up.”
While the 42-year-old is seen crooning cheerfully, he has an unhappy reason behind it. He shares, “I always liked singing and used to experiment with songs earlier. However, I suffered a heart stroke last year and resumed singing, more like humming, after doctors suggested doing breathing exercises.”
The cool professor has several other accomplishments to his credit. He is a gold medallist in Manufacturing Engineering, has a PhD in aerospace, and has also worked in the Indian Navy.
Jeyakrishnan has also sung the popular Ed Sheeran song Shape of You and Clean Bandit’s Rockabye Baby on the popular music app Smule, which he later shared on YouTube.
The professor has also given his own touch to the amazing Malayalam song Jimmiki Kammal. Jeyakrishnan’s Tamil cover of the song with his own lyrics has gathered a lot of attention.
Talking about the Jimmiki Kamal song, he says, “Everyone sang the Malayalam song without even knowing the lyrics, but I tried to understand the lyrics and translated them into Tamil and sang it,” he says. “I enjoyed the response to my version.”
While many appreciate the professor’s attitude and his confidence, there are many who troll him for his singing. A few comments to his songs read, “Giving Dhinchak Pooja a run for her money,” or “Sir where were you all this while?”
Many memes have also been shared on social media trolling the professor.
Courtesy: Chennai Memes
However, the unfazed professor says, “I’m not bothered by such criticism. I’m not a professional singer to get offended if someone says that my singing is bad. It’s just my hobby. I wouldn’t have shared those songs on social media. But the app [Smule] requires sharing the videos either on Facebook or YouTube in order to save them.”
Jeyakrishnan is also a member of a humour club, so these criticisms hardly affect him. “Unless the trolls get personal, it is all fine with me,” he says.