Because music knows no borders...

Amarjot Kaur

We couldn’t but stop noticing the sign of Ik Omkar tattooed on Adam’s hand and he ironed the fine two lines between our brows with a smile. “This I got tattooed from Nankana Sahib. I was all of 7 or 8 then. In fact, I am a staunch believer of Guru Nanak’s teachings. Perhaps that defines my stage name Khyber 13. I borrowed number 13 from Nanak’s famous teaching ‘Tera Tera’ (that dispels the shallow idea of ‘belongingness’) and Khyber is where my roots are,” he says.

Born to a Sikh family in Mardan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, Ajay Kumar Makol (Adam), 21, who is a DJ at S Cafe & Bar, first visited India when he was only eight years old. “My mother, who is an Indian, didn’t quite identify with the idea of wearing a hijab in the village, and since we are a minority there we had to take every sort of discrimination in our stride because we knew any act of retaliation could inflict misery, sometimes even death, on us. So, she moved here and started working with NGOs that provide mid-day meals to children. My father is a photographer in Pakistan,” he says. 

Brought up in a village called Pir Baba Buner, Adam sought his primary education at Sky Hawk Public School in Khyber before he enrolled as a student in Adarsh Public School, Sector 20. 

“In India, I sat next to a girl in the classroom for the first time and she was wearing a skirt. I felt so shy. I was surprised to see female teachers. In Buner, girls and boys are made to sit separately and female teachers are few and far between, who only teach girls. Of course, it was a culture shock, especially for a boy who was coming from a village in Pakistan,” he says. 

Back then, Justin Bieber’s Baby was a popular hit among the masses and it pretty-much appealed to Adam who wasn’t so fluent in English. “I looked for its lyrics and then started listening to a lot of pop music. It was only after I finished school that the idea of DJing came to my mind and I wanted to pursue it,” he shares. “Initially, I played free-of-cost gigs at clubs but later I was signed with Gaah.” 

Adam shares that back in Pakistan, he was taught Gurmukhi in school and that religious discourses were imparted at the Gurdwara, where he also learned to play harmonium. “I also play rubab, and that too because Nanak Ji’s played the instrument,” he adds. “I want to loop the sound of rubab with electronic music.” Not only has Adam played an opening gig for the Neuclya concert that took place in Chandigarh, recently, he has also been signed as an artiste with Gaah, an indie artiste management company in the city. 

“India has given me so much. It gave me recognition and new opportunities. In Pakistan there’s not much scope for DJing because there is no clubbing culture there, but then, I so miss the food and the rich street performances by street musicians in Lahore.  For now, I want to focus on my passion—DJing and study further,” he says. Adam is currently studying at Khalsa College in Sector 26.

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