Like most creative artistes, working on my art itself is a spiritual exercise for me. Creating music in my space, my temple, is my ultimate spiritual experience. In fact, I don’t even have a fixed place where I prefer to do my work; creativity often comes to me in the most random of places. But I don’t like beautiful landscapes or sceneries around me; they don’t enhance my creativity. A messy, cluttered and dingy room works best for me.

I go trekking to the Himalayas very often, but the beauty of the place takes over your being, overwhelming your instincts. And since it has a beauty of its own, there’s not much I can add to it. A filthy room, meanwhile, makes me want to flee the place and explore what could lie beyond those walls. It encourages me to come up with better compositions. Meeting up friends, having a glass of wine, taking off for long walks and reading are the other things I turn to, to recompress my brain.

Cooking is another passion of mine. Since my wife is Parsi and I am a South Indian, we always have a variety of preparations to choose from. Cooking for your loved ones and having a quiet meal with them can be very fulfilling and fun. I don’t believe in stressing myself too much. As long as I work to the best of my ability and think positively, I believe things will work out. I am a believer of sorts in the law of attraction. I say of sorts because I never consciously believed in it, but when I look back at my life, I realise I had never planned any of it. What I have today is what I had wished for, but I never really planned it this way. I set off as a struggling musician. Then came more gigs, performances, advertisements etc., none of which I planned as such. If things didn’t work out for me, I believe it didn’t because of a reason. Perhaps I wasn’t ready.

My life cycle forces me to believe that the universe is listening, and I, on my part, continue giving it signals.

As told to Sushmita Murthy