Soon after my earthly arrival in a London hospital, a Caribbean pediatric nurse carefully inspected my fingers and toes. She then confided to my mother, “This child will make music!”  Of course, my newly immigrated Indian mother decided not to tell me about this possibly life-altering prediction.  At least not until after I spent many years figuring out on my own that, yes, I would make music.
In the end, if I’d known about the nurse’s prophecy it probably wouldn’t have changed things. Well, maybe a little.

We lived in England until I was 7 and I remember being fascinated whenever I saw imported American shows playing on the tele. They were filled with images of sunny skies, fast cars and big hair styles. When we arrived, I expected the streets to be paved with gold. We ended up next door to a tow truck shop in  Lowell, Mass,  a city sorely lacking in gold or anything else resembling prosperity, in fact it was the epicenter of the region’s crack epidemic and thusly, became the subject of the HBO documentary, High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell. Of course, Lowell looked a lot cleaner in the doc than I remembered it during our stay. But I digress.

Not long after we arrived I found my escape through music. It started as free percussion lessons on vacant classroom desks at the crack of dawn each Saturday morning. When I later saved up enough money for a Casio CZ-101, “a pea-sized version” of the more professional CZ-1000, I was able to blend my newly acquired rhythmic sensibility with the standard keyboard skills. Once I hit my rebellious teen phase, it only made sense to whack an electric guitar in a similar fashion. After all, it was only rock & roll.

I was determined to leave all that fun behind me and make something of myself when I enrolled at NYU. A double-major in Economics and Political Science was my ticket. And then came the twist, the M. Night Shyamalan twist, of course. Night became one of my closest friends during and after NYU and he snuck me into filmmaking classes and film sets to show me how the other half lived. The atmosphere of creativity and collaboration was intoxicating and completely eye-opening to me. It wasn’t long before I got to see Night’s award-winning film composer,  Edmund Choi, scoring gorgeous music for one of Night’s early films, Wide Awake. By then I was hooked.

After graduating I was determined to make up for lost time so I returned for graduate studies at NYU’s prestigious Steinhardt Music Technology program. That’s where I saw how my music could blend the computerized and the handmade, explore cultural borders and intimate spaces, the personal and the global. I’ve also been able to study under conductor and orchestrator Steven Scott Smalley (Edward Scissorhands, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, The Insider, Mission: Impossible, Batman, Ali) plus mentoring from grammy-winners David Torn and Steven Gold (Fountains of Wayne, SNL).

Before long, I was recording World and Avant Garde musicians, mixing indie records and writing music for films long and short. In the past 7 years I’ve composed music for cutting edge projects (Sonnet for a Towncar) with iconic filmmaker Mary Harron (American Psycho) and Sundance-winner, John Walsh (Ed’s Next Move), as well as rising directorial stars Dennis Lee, Suzi Yoonessi, Hossein Keshavarz, Daniel Ragussis, Chadd Harbold, Caryn Waechter, Francisco Ordonez and Anja Marquardt. Among the numerous award-winning projects I’ve had the privilege to score, my recent projects include Dogsweat (2011 Independent Spirit Award Nominee, Someone to Watch Award), and Haber (winner, National Board of Review motion picture award, official selection at the prestigious Telluride Film Festival and shortlisted for 2008 Academy Award – short narrative).

Along the way, I’m had some pretty amazing collaborators like award-winning film composer Christopher Libertino (Speak), pop producer/remixer David Siskovic (Roxy Music, Scissor Sisters, Justin Timberlake), acclaimed sound designer Richard Fairbanks, choral arranger Roger Treece and Juan Mantilla, orchestrator for Oscar-winning classical composer, Elliot Goldenthal (Heat, Frida, Public Enemies). In 2008 I was invited to cover the TriBeCa Film Festival for Timeout NY Magazine, provide additional reporting for TapeOp (a pro audio magazine), serve as program director (2008) as well as Jury Foreman (2009) for the South Asian International Film Festival (which screens 50+ films over 7 days for 10,000+ attendees). I was also invited to the GenArt Film Festival’s remote screening committee (2010), NYU’s Tisch Graduate Film School and The New School’s documentary film programs as a guest speaker.

I’ve also received some press from IndieWire, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and numerous entertainment TV shows and blogs. Recently, I scored Jesus Henry Christ, alongside virtuoso musician and composer, David Torn. The film stars Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon, The Queen, Twilight: New Moon) and Golden-Globe/Emmy-award winning actress Toni Collette, and was executive produced by Julia Roberts. Jesus Henry Christ was written and directed by Dennis Lee, who wrote God is Good, which was my very first film.