Breaking Boundaries

Taba Chake, the indie singer-songwriter from Arunachal Pradesh, has made his Bollywood debut as a composer with Shoojit Sircar's I Want to Talk

- Karishma Upadhyay

When it was time for Taba Chake to pick the album cover for Bombay Dreams (2019), his debut full-length album, the young Arunachali singer knew he wanted his face on it. “At the time, I was inundated with questions about how I speak such good Hindi, which was very tiring,” says the 31-year-old. The 10-track set with songs in English, Hindi and Nyishi (Chake’s native language) has, as per his official YouTube channel, racked up over 55 million streams across all music platforms. The serene folksy sound of tracks like ‘Shaayad’ and ‘Aao Chalein’ found favour among reel creators and helped to cement his Hindi-speaking credentials. “I feel accomplished for having made people aware that we Arunachalis or other Northeasterners can and do speak Hindi,” he says with a laugh, adding, “Thankfully, no one asks me this question anymore.”