Sagarika at the Power FM studio in town. Pictures by Aranya Sen

When I was little, my mother told me to sing to the plants in the garden as that helped them grow up quickly. So, there I was waking up every day to sing to the plants. Little did I realise then that this one habit would make me sing to myself all my life.”

That is one of the explanations Sagarika gives for going missing all this while. In fact, till her new album It’s All About Love was launched with much fanfare in Mumbai recently, Shaan’s sister hadn’t cut an album in eight years. “I had just sung one duet with Strings called Ek pal and I sang a very morbid track for Bhopal Express,” she says, relaxing at the Power FM studios near Rashbehari Avenue on Thursday afternoon.

The more real reason for her absence from the recording studios was her food business. Along with three partners, Sagarika was busy running the popular Olive Bar and Kitchen in Mumbai. “I found food and music similar to each other,” she reveals. “If you don’t get the ingredients right, you will never get the perfect finished product. But I really enjoyed my stint as a restaurateur.”

This new album wouldn’t have taken shape had Sagarika not gone on a music tour with Talvin Singh. “A whole new world opened up for me as I went on the 18-city tour in Europe,” she exclaims. “Just being there, you realise that Indian music is not just about Bollywood songs. I am not targeting Himesh Reshammiya, but come on, there’s much more to our music. Once back from that tour, I felt confident enough to pull off an album on my own.”

Music producer Mike McCleary turned out to be Sagarika’s partner in rhyme as the two went about creative songs around various forms of love. “Apart from two tracks, written by Jaideep Sahni and Nida Fazli, I wrote all the songs myself. Since I think in English and the words are in Hindi, the songs may not be the typical poetry you get to hear. But these are feelings that I have internalised over the years.”

True to her “impulsive nature”, Sagarika thought of Bye bye baby as the first track to be turned into a video. “The song is about a previous relationship I had,” she recalls. “When it got over, it ended a lot of things in my life. Since it was an impactful event, I thought of starting this new phase of my career with that.” The video shot by film-maker Aditya Bhattacharya has Italian actor Michele Venitucci playing the romantic lead.

Despite making a musical comeback with her private album, Sagarika is not ready to return to Bollywood yet. “I started singing for films from the age of five but I have had some very bad experiences with the film industry folk in the recent past,” she says. “When you find out that your song has been re-dubbed by someone else because you didn’t go out on a dinner date with the composer, you don’t feel like returning to the studios. I have sung for films like Page 3, Pyar Ishq Aur Mohabbat and Tarkeeb, but I am not willing to sing playback anymore.”

She would love to sing with her brother, though. “We had sung a few tracks together for a Bengali album a couple of years back but it was such a washout that it completely set us back,” Sagarika admits. “But I am very happy with his success in Bollywood. Coming from a playback background, he always wanted to make it big as a playback singer and he has done it.”

Sagarika, in fact, is reluctant to get back to the music room, full-time. “I have been asked by a friend to do the interior decoration of a bar and restaurant in Goa,” she gushes. “That’s my next assignment. This is the best thing about my life ? no two days are the same.”