All Heart

We’ve always known Prateek Kuhad had the songwriting chops to make the entire country swoon. Now, he’s learning how to sell it.

- Nidhi Gupta

One humid May evening, Prateek Kuhad arrives at the JW Marriott in Mumbai, quietly name-checks himself on the GQ Best-Dressed guest list and steps into a dark room sliced up with shards of white light as SickFlip drops basslines to a crowd constituting Bollywood A-listers and Mumbai’s glitterati.

Kuhad chooses to stand by, a wallflower with a glass of whisky in hand, a mildly amused look on his face. On a night like this, if you didn’t already know him, you’d never be able to tell that the stubbled man in an unremarkable olive-black checked shirt is at present India’s most popular independent singer-songwriter.

That, on any given day, Kuhad can (and does) fill up stadia, parks and auditoriums all over the world with fans swaying to “Oh Love” and “Tune Kaha” encores. That he serenades the hundreds of pairs of eyes and ears on him (which, granted, largely belong to the female variety) with his buttery voice and gentle melodies, plated in setlists made up of earworms.

“Man, I was so underdressed,” Kuhad laughs the next morning. We’re at his sea-facing apartment in Mahim, bartering stories about Saturday night hangovers. Settlers Of Catan sits packed away on a table next to two gleaming trophies: An MTV EMA and RadioCity’s Freedom award. “There was some incredible fashion on display though.”