Journey

My journey on the path of music began in 1981, when I was 9, when my parents thrust a musical instrument into my hand, a small half size violin. Since then life has never been the same, and there’s never ever been a dull day in my life. At the age of 11, when most kids were grappling with playing cricket or football, I gave my first solo performance. The bow replaced the hockey stick and the violin gave direction to my dreams. It formed the foundation and the path that was designed to help me shape my destiny.

I consider myself most fortunate that my parents encouraged the musician in me and made sacrifices themselves so I may get the best training. At the age of 12, I met the person who was to play an extremely important role in influencing me as a musician, a composer and a person, the late Mr. Pervez Doctor.

Under his expert tutelage, I developed practical and effective skills as an orchestral musician, such as a tremendous sight reading ability,  orchestration, leadership and many non musical traits such as sensitivity, generosity, introspection, meditation and understanding the importance of fighting for what I believed in, qualities that have served me well in my journey.

At the age of 15, I became the leader of the orchestra and then diversified into playing other string instruments such as the Viola and the Cello. I learnt various styles of Western Classical musicsuch as Baroque, Ballad, Ballet, Chamber Music, Symphonies, Modern music by Russian and East European Composers, Latin American and many other styles of music.

Apart from the Bombay Players Orchestra, I also performed with the Dadar Music Ensemble, the Delhi Symphony Orchestra and the Sangat Festival Music Orchestra where I got the opportunity to interact, learn from and play with some of the best musicians from across the globe.  I got the opportunity to perform with the legends Laxmikant Pyarelal at the age of 19 and thus embarked on a new journey in the Film Recording industry. Since then I performed and played with many composers, famous and lesser known alike until the last movie which I played for as a musician, which was “KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI” under the baton of Jatin Lalit in 1998 and commenced my journey into Music Composition.

My first released album was “YEH DIL DEEWANA HAI” and it had the whos who of the singers from Bollywood.

After composing music for a few more albums I co-founded the bands “VEDIC CHANT” and “FIRE & ICE” and performed with them till I parted ways a few years later to focus on my independent career.

I began my foray into television as a programmer and associate to Mahesh Naik, one of the top names in Television at that time.

I assisted him with the Background score of many TV shows until I had the opportunity to score the music for my first independent TV show as composer for “KAGAAR” in the year 2002 for which I won the first of my awards as composer at the Indian Telly Awards.

The very next year I again won the Award for the Best Background score in a TV show for “GOONJ – ATEET KI”

The year 2005, rained awards for me, as apart from the Best background score for TV for “SARRKAR”, I received the MATA Sanmanand Maharashtra State awards along with K. C. LOY for our music in the Marathi Feature “PAK PAK PAKKAAK”.

In 2009 & 2010, I again won the Best background Score Award for my score in the Hit TV series “LAADO” & “BALIKA VADHU” respectively.

In 2011, my Title song for the film “ALWAYS KABHI KABHI” rocked the charts making it to the top 10.

In 2014, got critical acclaim for my background score in the film “ZID” where the background score was described in the reviews as one of the high points of the film.

In 2016, I won the IFEFA Young Achiever Award, and completed a dual milestone in my life, that of scoring music for over 100 TV shows and for over 20,000 episodes of TV music.

In 2017, I received the 10th Global Film Festival Award for Best Music Composer.

Currently, in 2018, the song, “TUM HO PAAS” that I composed for the hit webseries “KEHNO KO HUMSAFAR HAI” is a huge hit along with the show.

In the past 15 years in the TV industry, I have achieved milestones that take a lifetime and am still going strong at over 115 TV shows and over 22000 episodes of music on TV.

The TV series “BALIKA VADHU” & “DIYA AUR BAATI HUM” together have around 4000 episodes between them and have been dubbed and are extremely popular in many languages across India and the Globe.