Letting the Music Flow

A new documentary shows how a cycling trip along the Ganga helped composer Shantanu Moitra cope with profound loss

- Akhil Sood

After composing the music for the film PK (2014), composer and musician Shantanu Moitra felt an urge to step away for a bit. The rigours of Bollywood, as also the limitations of format impositions in music, had taken a toll. So, off he went to the Himalayas, for 100 days, with a friend. "I kept thinking: "Kamaal ka desh hai hamaara, kamaal ke log hain (this country and its people are spectacular). I started humming something very unlike the stuff I had done for Bollywood. All this classical music I heard as a kid-my father is from Varanasi-was, I think, in my DNA. I realised that if I travel, new music and ideas will come to me," says Moitra.