I’ve played with several bands since I began my career in music and in 1990, when I was part of a group called Kingsloth, I attended a sports festival at IIT Kanpur. There I spotted a band from Delhi’s Kirori Mal College that played awfully but played my kind of music. Without thinking twice I approached them to see if I could join them. Had it not been for this meeting, Parikrama would never have been born. And I would probably have been selling motor parts in my grandfather’s shop in Kashmere Gate rather than making music.

As time passed Parikrama too had its share of turning points. The first being the time when we went to the rock festival competition at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, in 1992 — and won. It was only after this that we became a professional rock band.

Then in 1995 we played at IIT Bombay’s Mood Indigo, the biggest college festival in India, where once again we competed at a national level. This proved to be an important platform for us for there was no other way that we could reach out to such a large audience. After this we started getting invited to perform at other festivals.

Parikrama has crossed many milestones since then. In 2007 we performed with British heavy metal band Iron Maiden in Bangalore. It was so exciting to have the band members of Iron Maiden stand by on stage to hear us perform. The same year we played at UK’s premier rock do, the Download Festival at Donington Park in central England. We played alongside American rock bands like My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park. All these milestones have made us the band that we are today.

(As told to Saimi Sattar)