• last year
The “Kho Gaye Hum Kahan” actor left his hometown Jamshedpur at 13 to become a playback singer, but Mumbai had other plans for him…
Transcript
00:00You might have seen me in The White Tiger as Balram Halwai
00:06And you might have more recently seen me as Neel Parer and Kho Gaye Hum Kaha
00:11What you guys probably also don't know is that I'm actually a Hindustani classical singer
00:25I was born in Jhimshetpur which was erstwhile Bihar, now Jharkhand
00:28I have been trained in Hindustani classical since I was 5 years old
00:33And till the time I was 15, I wanted to be a playback singer
00:37In fact, when I was 9 years old, I went on Sa Re Ga Ma Pa
00:40When I was 13 years old, I went on Little Champs
00:43I got rejected from both the places
00:45Sa Re Ga Ma Pa had come to Jhimshetpur for the first time
00:48I think it was 2003 or 2004 and I must have been 9 or 10 depending on the year
00:52And I told my parents that I want to audition
00:55And I don't know why my parents didn't tell me that it doesn't happen under 17
00:59And I remember when my turn came to go into the gate
01:02People at the gate, the organisers were like
01:04This is a kid, who told him to stand here?
01:07Brother, you go aside, it's not for you
01:09And when they said it's not for you, I felt so humiliated and hurt
01:13And you know I had a knack for also creating drama, I was a very dramatic kid
01:18So I just instantly like broke into tears and started like you know howling and crying
01:24And this is like prime time masala for you know any of the cameramen
01:29So like instantly everybody surrounded me and everybody started asking me
01:32Son, what happened? What happened?
01:33And I'm like look, they are not letting me go inside
01:35We are also classical singers but they are not giving us a chance to sing
01:38We also want to sing
01:39So then they took me to a passport photo studio
01:43They clicked a photo there and then they let me go inside
01:46And I think I sang from my heart in the audition
01:49You won't be able to erase my love
01:57So they told me that you sing very well, come after 5 years
02:01When I was 13, my father got transferred to Mumbai
02:04As a family, we felt that it would probably give me lots of opportunity to pursue music
02:08I started doing playback, I used to go to Ajay Vasanth, Suresh Wadkar's academy
02:12Where Padma Wadkar was my guru and she taught me
02:15And she gave me lots of opportunities to sing not just for films
02:18But also for stage shows across Mumbai
02:21One of those stage shows was Mumbai festival that happened in 2007
02:25And while singing Vande Mataram on stage
02:28Nazli Karimbhoi who used to work for Rahil Padamshi's company called Ace
02:33She noticed me and she asked me if I was interested in acting
02:36Although I had been going up on stage since I was very young
02:39I had a lot of stage fright so I would always sing with my eyes shut
02:42So I don't know why she asked me if I was interested in acting
02:44Because I had zero stage presence
02:46And I, like any other excited 13 year old said yes
02:49Because I probably just wanted to see myself on television
02:52But I sang with Sukhwinder Singh and Ilai Raja both in 2007 and 2008
02:58The year I moved to Mumbai
03:00For Black and White which was directed by Subhash Khai
03:03And Chal Chale which was South's remake
03:05If you go back and listen to the album you probably won't hear my voice
03:08Because I sang in the chorus of both the songs
03:11I started doing theatre in school a little bit
03:17In college a little bit
03:19I shot for a bunch of television commercials
03:21And in 2015 was when I had a kind of eureka moment
03:26When I was shooting with Anurag Kashyap for a short film called Teen Shaven
03:31Anurag Kashyap was somebody who told me that I should take acting more seriously
03:35Because he probably saw some potential in me
03:37And he said that I should train myself as an actor
03:39And thus in 2016 I went to the drama school Mumbai in Charni Road
03:43And I trained myself as an actor for one year
03:45Where not only did I act but I also sang, I composed, I wrote, I directed, I did lights
03:51Pretty much everything
03:52Since then I've been working
03:53And this year, 2023 actually last year has definitely been my highlight year
04:00I've had three releases
04:01Guns and Gulabs for Netflix
04:03Extra Appalachians for Apple TV
04:05And then to end the year Kho Gaye Haan Ka
04:07That's me guys
04:09The one who has woken up
04:11While the rest of you are still sleeping