Q – How has your experience been at BITS Pilani?

A – Well, it’s my first time here. We haven’t really had a look around but, looking from the time we spent, nice crowd, the students like to have fun, and they appreciate good music. That really matters a lot to us.

Q – What kicked off your interest in music? A lot of kids learn Carnatic music because their parents tell them to.

A – That’s exactly how I got started, and three years into it was when I genuinely got interested. I got together with other musicians and that sort of kept me going on. My sister who studied with me dropped out because she had other interests, but somehow, I chose to become a musician.

Q- What sort of music do you personally prefer listening to?

A – Now I’m on the lookout for new music, but from the Carnatic greats to artists like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, I’m just trying to find something that can inspire me.

Q- What are the differences between your experiences as a solo artist and as part of the group?

A – I have not done any solo performances except one or two odd concerts but when you play with a group there is a vibe that is onstage and that is very nice and a collective addition of everyone’s energy onstage and that is electrifying, which obviously you don’t have in a solo concert.

Q – How has your experience been touring? why do you like touring?

A – For me, it’s just happiness in meeting new people and sending our music to new people. There’s some travel that’s not very easy, so that makes it all worth it to travel to new places, play for a new audience, and have a tour of a kind. It’s also good for the band to be together and spend some quality time and there is a lot of progress that happens within the music and our relationships, that’s as far as a larger tour goes.

Q – What do you say to purists who say that Carnatic music is suffering because of fusion?

A – Purists are there, will always be there, and luckily a lot of purists don’t seem to have had too many problems with our music. Sometimes there is constructive criticism, sometimes people don’t like what you’re doing only because they have an opinion about how a certain thing should be and they feel like you’ve crossed a line. You just have to agree to disagree, that’s the only way about it. I can’t say they are wrong, they can’t say I am wrong because I am doing something that I like and I have people liking it as well, so my quest within myself and to reach out to other people is complete. But there is choice and people can listen to the music they want, so who’s stopping people from listening to their music?

Q – Do you think classical music is not getting the attention of the younger audience?

A – For me, IndoSoul is about taking classical music and presenting it to people who listen to other types of music, but it’s important not to compromise the integrity of the music in any way. I feel like classical music has been here for hundreds of years, so there’s no need to defend it, it’ll be here and it’ll always have its listenership. A lot of outfits like ours are taking classical music in a way that our generation would like it more, so it’ll always remain, it’ll always survive and it’ll always show the way.

Q – What is your feeling on the recent controversy in Carnatic music regarding the caste-based discrimination?

A – I think the news, the sensationalism becomes more important than the topic. I think there is a certain bias that exists. But I wonder if people are actually concerned about the issue. today we live in a world where everyone has taken sides, so it’s always about “let’s push an issue and there’s two sides to it, then people fight it out and people get pleasure out of it”. Definitely there has been a casteist bias and I think that could be because of one person’s interest, it could be because of one person’s background and what society wants them to do. It’s too simplistic to say that if a person is from a certain caste he is not allowed to do something.

Q – Do you have any words of advice?

A – The obvious part is to keep working hard. That aside, there’s always a moment where you forget what you practiced, what you’ve learned, and you start to get creative with it. If you’ve practiced an hour, it’s important to spend ten minutes of it just letting yourself go. That creates a balance from becoming too mechanical, between practicing and being able to create. That matters a lot – to get, explore, and express fresh ideas. That is my message for the artists.

In general, I think college today is a very interesting time, more than what it was when I was in college. The opportunities you guys have outside the traditional medium are huge, I think it’s nice to stop for a moment, think about what you want to do with your life, where your interests are and where your strengths are. There is always a point where they converge. That’s something that each one of us all through our lives, we need to ask ourselves like what do we want to be and I think in college that becomes very important. In my college I got a job and I didn’t take it – I came to this path instead. Thankfully my parents supported me. A lot of people came to college because our parents wanted us to join, because our friends joined. But there is never a better point of time than college to ask ourselves what do I want to do.