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Strap: With the success of Gully Boy behind him and several exciting projects in his kitty, it is a great time for Ankur Tewari

Neha Kirpal

Earlier this year, driving past India Gate in Delhi, which was invisible because of the smog, singer-songwriter Ankur Tewari was alarmed. “It almost felt post-apocalyptic, to see such an iconic monument literally vanish in front of my eyes.” He eventually put the words down, trying to address the climate crisis that’s staring us in the face. The words eventually got a tune and Dhuaan Dhuaan was released recently.

The song conveys a message about the increasing pollution and declining air quality around us, inviting listeners to change their behaviour. Tewari believes that the climate crisis is something that cannot be tackled alone. While the government ought to play its part, people too need to take small steps to improve things. Like last year Tewari sold his car. “I felt I did not need to keep one. Bombay has a great transport system. One can take a train or hire a cab,” he says.

It isn’t a one-off incident that became his song. His last one, Aainda, which was released in October, was a response to vicious trolling on Twitter. “I realised that hate is something that’s trending in this world like an infection. Instead of responding to them with a hateful comment, I thought that perhaps I should write them a love song, since everyone could do with a little love in their life,” he says.

From his first job as a hotel trainee to being “music supervisor” to Gully Boy’s 18-song album, Tewari’s rise has been simultaneous to that of the Indian entertainment industry. He recently gave music to Amazon Prime Video’s web series Made in Heaven. He collaborated with musicians such as Gaurav Raina and Tarana Marwah for the show’s score. “The theme they made really moved me and then I worked with Dub Sharma who did a version of Roshay. Then, there was Sagar Desai who did a couple of songs and then we did a song with Malini Awasthi ji. It was just exciting to work with these guys and put together such fun music,” he says.

Tewari says web series have opened up an exciting world for independent musicians like him. “Because the cost of running a film is high, people just end up going to established music directors. With web series on the other hand, the scope of experimentation is much larger. Also, directors work with artistes who aren’t mainstream,” he says.

Last year, Tewari founded Kommune, an arts organisation that brings together people from the fields of storytelling and poetry. “We want to create a collective of people who find themselves in spaces where they can enhance their lives with songs, stories and poems — a space for them to exchange ideas, build a community that thrives, help and inspire each other to create better performance art,” he explains.

With Gully Boy catapulting him into fame, he has been supervising music for several films, prominent among them being Sooni Taraporevala’s Yeh Ballet and Mira Nair’s A Suitable Boy.