#SingIndiaSing - India's Most Ambitious English Musical

With 29 multi-genre songs and an all-star cast, the project marks a new milestone for live entertainment in the country.

- Amit Gurbaxani

Mumbai vocalist Siddharth Basrur is looking me straight in the eye. There’s anguish and desperation in his voice. `How Do I Win the Race’ he asks repeatedly. Or rather sings. You’ve won it in my book, I think.

We’re inside Sitara Studio in central Mumbai, and I’m the only non-cast or crew member at a run-through of Sing India Sing, a new musical conceived and written by the veteran director and playwright Rahul DaCunha with adman and actor ‘Bugs’ Bhargava Krishna and directed by Nadir Khan. The fourth and final production in Aadyam’s 2018 season of plays, it will premiere this month at Mumbai’s National Centre For the Performing Arts.

Basrur and company have been rehearsing for months, and it shows. We could very well be at one of his gigs, watching any of his several bands over the years, the most recent of which is Runt.

However, he’s not Siddharth Basrur right now. He’s rocker Vishnu Saigal, one of the four contestants vying to win the reality show Sing India Sing. “If you’ve seen me perform, I usually shut my eyes when I’m singing, and I tend to move around a lot,” he said. “But as Vishnu, I’m more rooted, and my eyes are always locking with someone else’s. It’s given me much confidence.”

Vishnu’s competition is Carnatic classical trained rapper Jazzy aka Jayashankar Iyer, played by theater actor and director Tavish Bhattacharyya; former bar dancer Kitty, portrayed by singer Kamakshi Rai; and mysterious masked girl Shweta played by vocalist Sarosh Nanavaty. Rai and Nanavaty, incidentally, were both contestants on different seasons of English reality TV singing talent series The Stage.