How did you get into music?

My parents wanted to get into music when they were kids. But because of their financial backing, they could not afford it. My mother and father lived their dream through us when they chose to enlist my younger sister and me to music classes. I learnt tabla, and my sister Carnatic vocals.

I’ve grown up listening to my mother singing Bengali songs that she used to sing to us. These were songs she’d sing in her songfests. And I still remember my dad turning the Ceylon radio just to the right setting where there were zero noise and only Malayalam film music. He used to play the radio when he could, and croon his favourite songs in his past time. Most of these songs were P. Jayachandran songs.

All these subtleties in music brewing around me soaked me fully into music. Ever grateful to my parents for opening up their world of dreams through us.