Savouring A Slice Of India's Rich Crate-Digging Culture With Nishant Mittal

Chronicling his love story with over five decades of esoteric Indian music, New Delhi's Nishant Mittal spills on his triumphs and trials at the front lines of India's vinyl revolution

- Sharan Sanil

"All I knew about records was from watching Almost Famous and High Fidelity, the movies about the record shop owners," laughs Nishant Mittal AKA DigginginIndia, an entrepreneur, record collector, and music archivist based out of Delhi.

"I think I must have been 19 or 20. I didn't even know how it works at that time, I just bought it because I wanted to buy a record," chuckles Mittal, reminiscing about the first time he purchased a record a compilation named Discoparty2, curated by Hungarian music publisher Hungaroton and pressed by the Gramophone Company of India, Ltd. - a common marque you'll find on many pre-1990s record sleeves.

A gift to a friend, Discoparty2 would echo much of Mittal's future taste in music. Tempered with Pink Floyd and The Beatles in his youth, the 28-year-old eventually wandered through the discographies of Aretha Franklin and Miles Davis, before deep-diving in his early twenties into more esoteric genres, at least compared to the average Indian music enthusiast.

This meant a studied, enthusiastic diet of genres such as city pop, jazz, afro, funk, and eventually a tour across the history of Indian artists from jazz cats in the sixties, to rock and roll bands in the seventies, and of course, disco in the eighties.

Today, much of Mittal's work revolves around excavating these forgotten relics from India's past, primarily through highly curated uploads on his DigginginIndia persona, online. Here, Mittal explores everything from Bengali Boney M. covers to the intricacies of cover design, while tracing the culture of vinyl across the subcontinent with a delicate, passionate zeal.

The genesis, however, of Mittal's obsession with the Indian music rabbit hole, came through an early experience of discovering a very particular track, which was recorded over half a century ago.