Magical Melodies from Madness

Rupa maps the journey of a young couple that gravitated to each other to realise their untrained musical potential with love and support. An exclusive for Different Truths.

On the brink of bursting into our personal space with their creativity, passion, talent, and music, meet an upcoming, irrepressible talented duo. Their self learnt musical talent is exploding on creative horizons with magnetism, heart, story-telling, and charisma. Theirs is a sweet love story with its share of struggles, angst, resistance and sweet beginnings to a new chapter.

Their group is in its infancy, yet to be formalised into a proper company. Kausik reminisces where he started.

I was mesmerised by Hrithik Roshan and Sachin in my formative 10th-grade years and wanted to be them. All the while worshipping, deriving hope and inspiration from listening to AR Rahman music.

I was just a different guy. It almost seems like talking about someone else for me, an out of body experience – that guy, before this happened to me. I was a completely different guy. I was a very mass-ey (from the masses) guy at heart, snobbish about my good looks, wannabe Tollywood hero, crazy dancer, 88% 5th rank type guy at studies – but always underachieving in my father’s eyes. My obsessions were in cinema and cricket. I was mesmerised by Hrithik Roshan and Sachin in my formative 10th-grade years and wanted to be them. All the while worshipping, deriving hope and inspiration from listening to AR Rahman music.

The best part about my childhood is that I studied in a perfect boarding school setup, which I reminisce to this very day. I can’t thank my parents enough for keeping me in a boarding school where I was free to express and grow myself as an individual with huge playgrounds in a big “Harry Potter” kind of campus setting where I made friends for life. The only problem being in a hostel meant we did not have external entertainment like TV or movies. They would show us one bhakti/deshbhakti (devotional/patriotic) movie once in a month. This increased my thirst for watching movies manifold. My brother Aggu and I used to narrate stories of every movie we watched in holidays to the rest of the students in the class individually for the next three months.

I still feel I’m still stuck in my 10th class brain and only my body has aged and grown.

Suddenly it’s a haze, my years between grade 10th and MBA, which I do not feel connected with much. I still feel I’m still stuck in my 10th class brain and only my body has aged and grown.

There was something about AR Rahman’s music which just never satiated me. I used to feel so excited listening to his music and just did not know how and what to do to express it. I made a huge collection of each music bit he made along with bgms and listened to it continuously in my MP3 player. I tried dancing, became very good at it too, but still, that inexplicable excitement asking for an artistic release was never fulfilled. I used to write music reviews, still a big piece was remiss-fulfillment.

I met Bhargavi on Orkut in my MBA days. She became my best friend albeit online

I met Bhargavi on Orkut in my MBA days. She became my best friend albeit online, she used to listen to all my girl-friend problems and would advise and console me. I met her first time in Bangalore Sri Sri Ashram – serene and angelically yogic. I could not believe that such a pure woman would even talk to a messy guy like me. She liked me!  I still wonder about it at times, why?

Bhargavi is a spiritual, soft, gentle, sensitive soul whose sensitivity is a double-edged sword being her strength and weakness rolled into one. Through family and personal losses, she learnt to question everything, she learnt the hard way that her soft mother became the backbone to the uplift family at the hour of need. Her spirituality helped her to deal with some tough situations. And this is what led her to me via Orkut.

I was struggling to release that innate, inherent god gifted miracle of music, composing, orchestrating a la AR Rehman.

I was struggling to release that innate, inherent god gifted miracle of music, composing, orchestrating a la AR Rehman. After my couple of failed relationships and talking about it, we got closer. After a few months, when they met in Chennai, he proposed marriage in front of Hanuman.  From nowhere a priest appeared and gave her a big rose. She took it and said, “Yes”!

After a lot of drama of hiding feelings, I proposed to her in Sri Sri Nada Vaibhavam, in 2011.

She feels, Kausik is highly energetic, extremely short-tempered, intellectual, sensitive, egoistic, sincere, very artistic, highly efficient, fast-paced, smart worker, introvert, can be easily influenced, follow every news, memes, etc.  He loves books, reading, cricket, movies, latest gadgets, video games. Hates socialising, travelling, hanging out and considers it a waste of time. Above all a very good human being who never talks ill about others nor listens to any nonsense, always transparent of his opinions and has a straight forward attitude towards life.

Meet his better half, Bhargavi, who is sensitive, strong, soft-spoken, moderately artistic, she loves socialising, travelling, trying new cuisines, experiencing new sports/activities, meeting friends, laughter time. However, she hates reading, cricket, movies, current affairs.

In 2011, she bought me a toy flute where you can play a basic scale because she saw me excitingly play the only tune I knew, “Twinkle twinkle little star” in the toy shop.

In 2011, she bought me a toy flute where you can play a basic scale because she saw me excitingly play the only tune I knew, “Twinkle twinkle little star” in the toy shop. I started playing more small songs on toy flute very badly to impress her. She recalls with their meagre resources she had to bargain down the price to gift him this blessing.

One day after watching Bollywood movie, Rockstar, my brother and friends were sitting on a forbidden mountain still in a daze, my brother started playing, ‘Ye jo desh hai mera,’ at 75% speed. I was literally able to see the notes were moving up and down around a satisfying note. I just shrugged it off.

Something clicked in me about music – that music has a home note and the tune is all about how you take the tune out of home, increase tension and how to resolve it by bringing back to the home note.

Bhargavi plays wonderfully the veena. I once asked what are notes, and I played my regular “Twinkle Twinkle” on veena too. Something clicked in me about music – that music has a home note and the tune is all about how you take the tune out of home, increase tension and how to resolve it by bringing back to the home note. I started listening to all Rahman songs and I started understanding what is it that makes me tick. I started to deeply analyse every Rahman song. My roommate Nepal and my brother Aggu gifted me a basic Casio, I’m sure that was to stop my bleeding of their ears with my toy flute.

One day in Sameera Bharadwaj’s (Sis-in-law) house, for the first time I touched a real keyboard. I was able to play many tunes. A new realisation dawned on me. I returned home, put a big playlist of AR Rahman, started jamming with Rahman directly. Each song was in different root and scale, by the time the playlist ended in two hours. I was comfortable playing in all scales and keys and ragas, Indian classical and Western classical. I was set free. My creativity was unshackled. It felt like this is what I wanted – a fulfillment in playing my favourite Rahman tunes. Slowly, I realised I was able to play some basic tunes on many instruments like real flute and violin too.

Bhargavi loves guitar, so I tried surprising her by learning off of guitar for our “love anniversary”. During learning, for the first time, I composed a song on her from my heart and my feelings. Then I started studying more about music, composing, performing, orchestrating, expression, modulation, counterpoint, harmony.

After much ado over inter-caste marriage, we got married.

After much ado over inter-caste marriage, we got married. I moved to the US from Chennai as a Business Intelligence consultant, in 2014, where while working on Tesla motors client site, on manufacturing data warehouse and BI. I started composing tunes to express my loneliness without her in an unknown land. Then she finally joined me.

Luckily, I was a lone wolf in my job-project, where I did not need to maintain an offshore team, which gave me time for my music. I created one solid architected data warehouse and automated all mundane tasks. It was a breeze for me for three years since it became the best design at the same time required very little maintenance, with ease of adding more blocks. Being an Electrical Engineer, I started understanding the sound mixing and synth creation more efficiently. This is one place where my engineering degree really helped me in exploring music fast.

We started saving up by living low in a small but beautiful condo in Fremont, USA.

We had the most beautiful honeymoon in the USA for almost four years, during which I matured in composing more short films, Indie movie trailers, and private ads. We started saving up by living low in a small but beautiful condo in Fremont, USA. I started accumulating all licensed original soft wares, sample libraries.

Then Arjun was born. During this, OSHO happened to me, and my spiritual journey took me on a different high. He made me realise my missing pieces, and my speed of learning rocketed into new creative genres. I love playing with small kids, all kids in our apartment complex used to play in my house banging on my instruments, drawing sketch pen paintings and playing. They called me Music Uncle – during this, I realised all kids are instantaneously good at playing music – everyone. From my realisation, the best way to learn anything fast is to jam with professionals. Like a kid learns a language by jamming with us, the professionals, not by learning ABCD first. Luckily, we all have enough music available to us already with which we can jam and enjoy music intensely.

I saw that look of an excited child in everyone who when they realised that they too can play music, I somehow felt like I solved world peace problem by increasing everyone’s inner peace.

And music is more primal to us than language. We recognise music patterns perfectly in our brain. This drove me to test this technique on multiple persons with positive results. Many people who strongly argued that they don’t have music in them were able to play many tunes out of their memory in a matter of an hour. I saw that look of an excited child in everyone who when they realised that they too can play music, I somehow felt like I solved world peace problem by increasing everyone’s inner peace.

I really believe that if a person is able to express his emotions through music, he will be able to easily let go off the emotion to achieve bliss from playing music.

I started developing software to help with my compositions on python, to write counterpoint lines easier. It came out so well now that my software plays music along with a person in counterpoint. It is surreal, almost like jamming with an invisible partner.

Bhargavi calls it his Eureka moment!

I decided to call it quits in the US, return to India to pursue my vision.

So, with my vision of spreading music, along with this software ready to release this year, a sense of maturity in musical compositions; production techniques, sight of Arjun’s smiling face, and my soulmate’s confidence, love and support behind me, I decided to call it quits in the US, return to India to pursue my vision.

We started off knowing no one in Hyderabad, made our own song.

I am currently co-writing a couple of web series and movie scripts with my brother Aghamarshan, who is completely into our dream passion project now. Whatever I am today, or whatever songs I make, whatever stories I create with my brother, everything is just to impress my partner and show her my love every day in a new way.

Bhargavi wants their passion project to create jobs, provide peace, solace, comfort through their music, and she is excited for the world to use their software that will help layperson play music.

Here is wishing once lost souls who together make melodious notes in life and otherwise, a beautifully creative, musical journey ahead! We are watching Kausik and Bhargavi!

Photos by Kausik and Bhargavi