Ankur Tewari: Life of a Hindie musician

A journey is assumed memorable if you have seen more than you can remember and remember more than you have seen.

Mine has been a truly fulfilling one. Ten years ago, I was fresh out of college and dreamt impossible dreams. One was to compile a record of my songs, so that I could reach out to people beyond those around me. It was a time ruled by music videos and plagued by remixes, and when Mumbai was known as Bombay. 

The nation was grooving to Gulshan Kumar’s Jhankar beats and sequencer software had given birth to a whole generation of 'convenient musicians'. Around that time I chose a path that would turn out to be the longer, more inconvenient route.

I wanted to record a live album with no electronica. I wanted every note in my record to be played "in flesh".

I was stubborn about my decision. Somehow for me, music in the 1990s had lost its soul. I was striving for perfect imperfections rather than the rigid metronome grids. No music label was willing to helm a project like that. I was often rejected and my demo tape found its way into the trash bin more often than not.

Rejection wasn’t something I was alien to. I grew up in the small university town of Roorkee, and as a kid I was thrown out of the school choir because my voice cracked way before my fellow choir mates.

My father had bought me a guitar early in my life. But my guitar teacher tried to teach me with some hard knuckle raps and our relationship lasted only a week. Soon I was bunking guitar class and scheming to teach him a lesson, by learning the guitar on my own.

Here’s a quick recipe for guitar lessons. Take a dependable VHS player and half an hour of 'Top of the Pops’ (aired every Wednesday). Add a little practice. Some annual Pre-Grammy and Grammy transmissions. Some more practice. A couple of Rock Street Journal guitar tabs. A pinch more of practice. Put it all on slow simmer and there you have a nice series of self taught guitar lessons.

College was a degree in Hotel Management in Bhopal. I escaped some of the more rigorous ragging, by playing a couple of songs for my seniors. Just for the record, I am guilty of having played "Hotel California" more times than the Eagles themselves. And no, I don't play it anymore.

Over the weekends I was singing at a restaurant near the Bhopal airport, where I would sneak in the occasional original song. But no one was complaining. My depleting attendance in college was a clear reflection of my soaring confidence within the world of music and myself.

Industrial training brought me to the Taj Mansingh hotel in Delhi. A brief stint at the dishwashing machine and a few snide remarks by hotel guests made me resolve my dilemma. I wanted to be on the other side of the table.

Goodbye career in hotels and hello show business. I was headed to the City of Dreams.

My first run in Mumbai resembled a nightmare sequence more than a dream. My schedule was simple -- rounds of music label offices during the day and passing out on Black Dog cheap scotch at night. Living in a hot muggy chawl at Parel was intimidating and scary. And it was a too-close-for-comfort close encounter with a bandicoot that made me flee Bombay to Delhi’s safer havens.

Destiny led me to Colonel Kapoor, who after hearing me sing made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He wasn’t going to pay me for making music, but I could live in his house. I learnt my ropes in filmmaking there, and slowly diversified into screenwriting, production and direction, which is my work now, besides music.

One thing led to the another, and my affair with Delhi saw me produce a couple of stage plays, art direct a major television series, sing half a dozen radio jingles in more than a dozen languages, produce a short film, curate an international film festival and make a trillion friends.

I was ready to take on Mumbai one more time.

I moved back to the manic city of Mumbai in 2004 to finish the edit on a feature film I was co-directing with friend. I sung and composed a couple of songs for the movie, and that’s when the ANR from my music label HOM records noticed me. Finally there was a label that was willing to invest in my music and sell my record.

I took my time recording my album. I meticulously put down each note, over a long period of time. I recorded with a range of musicians in a variety of settings over three years or so -- from flood-struck Mumbai monsoon to the emergency-beset Lahore. My friends and family were constantly wondering what I was up to. Quizzical questions came from all directions.

Eventually I completed "Jannat", my record of a story compiling a decade in my life.

It's been a long time since I started this journey and it’s now time for a new dream and a new journey. I learnt a lesson over the years. Art is never completed; only abandoned. So here I am, abandoning this dream, ready to embrace the next. In pursuit of the elusive answer to the eternal question: Are we there yet?

Ankur Tewari's debut album, titled "Jannat" (Rs 125, HOM Records) launches this Saturday, March 20, 9 pm onwards, at Zenzi Mills with a performance by Ankur & the Ghalat family. Autographed CD copies available. Listen to Ankur Tewari online at www.myspace.com/ankur.tewari