ANKUR TEWARI'S MULTI-FACETED MUSICAL LIFE

From curating music for the rebranded Coke Studio Bharat, to launching a new solo album, and scoring music for the upcoming film The Archies, it has been a busy year for the singer-songwriter

- ANURAG TAGAT

GOOD LUCK CAFÉ, a typical Mumbai-style Irani restaurant near Bandra’s historic Mehboob Studio, is a favorite haunt for Ankur Tewari. The informal seating and the anonymity here helps him enjoy sitting with strangers of various stripes, talking to them and listening in on their conversations. “ If you go and have chai there, you can easily drop into these people's conversations and hear so much,” he says excitedly, “You get exposed to so many lives. I like the idea that you can share your table with someone you don't know. It's very intimate when you sit across the table and talk to even strangers. It's kind of in sync with my life.”

Tewari lives in Bandra and much of what he does revolves around here (including the cover photography for this article was done on his building terrace). Good Luck Café in that sense is an integral part of his life. It has provided him rich material for the many songs he has written for himself and others, and of course his work as a poet. Songs like “Parwaana”—the opening track of his new album Akela—are drawn from his time here. “I don't know if it's entirely true, but I remember vaguely a person talking about the love of their life and how they will go to any extent to be with their love. I don't know if the whole song is from there, but one part of the emotion comes from a conversation I had at Good Luck,” he says.

The psychedelic and brooding