Yolane D'Mello (MUMBAI MIRROR; May 4, 2014)

Sunidhi Chauhan was barely 15 when she first met music producer and, now, husband Hitesh Sonik. “We were meeting Vishalji (Dadlani), and Hitesh was there for a recording. All I remembered of him, from that meeting, were his toes and the ethnic chappals he was wearing.”

 It was 1995, Chauhan’s family moved from Delhi to Mumbai, and her father Dushyant would set out (“in his sports shoes”) to make the rounds of music directors’ offices and showcase her voice.

 “She sang like a lioness. But she was so shy, she’d stare at the floor and sing,” recalls Sonik, who gets his surname thanks to the family’s gold trade.

 The couple married in 2012, and he wants to set the record straight. “We weren’t childhood friends,” he says. “We aren’t even the same age to have been in school together,” adds the 38-year-old with a smile.

 We are sitting in his studio housed in the couple’s Versova apartment, the walls lined with guitars. There are close to 52 studios in the neighbourhood that’s now a Bollywood hub, Chauhan tells us, swivelling her chair absent-mindedly to let her pixie-cut dyed burgundy do the flop.

 When they met, Chauhan had been a singer for a decade. She started when she was four, accompanying her father at jagrans. The theatre actor pushed her to sing at local performances, and it was at one of these that television personality Tabassum noticed her. “She suggested we move Mumbai, but dad forgot about it, thinking she was humouring a child,” she says.

 A few years later, he called Tabassum while the family was holidaying in the city and, “she was elated. She took us to meet Kalyanji (Kalyanji-Anandji music composer duo), who gave us two minutes because he had to rush,” she recalls. Ninety minutes later, the eight-year-old was still singing. “I sang every song I knew. At the end of it, he told my father not to return to Delhi.”

 Chauhan was enrolled under Kalyanji’s guidance and changed her name from Nidhi to Sunidhi. He even came up with the idea of children’s talent troupe, Little Wonders where Udit Narayan’s son Aditya was also introduced. But her father wanted her to be an artiste who sang for films. Ram Gopal Varma’s Mast was her breakthrough as a 15-year-old.

 Were there others singers as young as her at the time? Chauhan, true to her foot-staring self, says she is not sure. But Sonik steps in with a firm, “No”.

 In contrast, he was never coaxed into taking up music although the family was involved in the production of Bollywood tracks, with Sonik’s granduncle becoming a singer in Mumbai. “Post Partition, my family moved from Sialkot in Pakistan to a refugee camp in Delhi. They lacked skills that could help them find work, so my dad’s uncle started to show them the ropes,” narrates Sonik, who grew up in Khar.

 He took to learning the guitar when he was 15 “to impress the girls at college” studying science at Mithibhai. Eventually, he assisted his father in recordings and made it a full-time profession. “I wanted to be an architect because I liked to sketch,” he says, pointing to an unfinished pencil sketch that hangs on the wall of the living room. But music dominated his personal life, too.

 “I fell in love with Sunidhi’s singing before I fell for her,” he admits. Their frequent run-ins at studios over the years, led to a friendship and later, love.

 He recalls a show for which she travelled to Cochin and sang in Malayalam. It’s just one of a string of regional languages she has sung in although she understands Hindi and English only. “She is like a machine. She can emulate any sound she hears,” he offers.

 “Ratta marna aata hai. I did it in school, though in hindsight, it didn’t seem to work too well. I dropped out in standard nine,” she laughs.

 Sonik lets her sentence trail off. “But that is because you were already working when others were still in school.” She gives him a coy smile, before admitting to having missed out on the college experience. “If I did enroll, it would have been in Mumbai. Then we’d have met much earlier,” she imagines.

 Sonik gives a tentative head shake. “The eight year age gap wouldn’t make that possible. We’d have a chance at school,” he says, putting forward his best goofy smile. This worked out fine, they chorus. 

 Chauhan breaks into a song mid-tune; the rest plays in the back of her head.

 Sonik grew up listening to guitar-heavy music and idolised Slash from Guns N’ Roses, while Chauhan was raised on Lata Mangeshkar’s tunes. They are not a couple you’ll see at a jazz gig. But Chauhan says she is hooked on a song after every recording, and will sing it for the next couple of days. “He’s fixated on not wanting people to enter the studio when he is working on a composition. But when it’s ready, I’m the first ear,” says Chauhan.

 Amole Gupte’s Hawaa Hawaai, due to release next week, has Sonik on board as music director. Chauhan lends her voice for a song titled Ghoom Gayi. “Amol suggested we get Sunidhi, and I knew hers was the right voice. The song is about freedom, and needed a big voice,” he says watching her leave the room.

 As the door shuts, she breaks into a song. Something she said in passing strikes a chord. “In the studio, you are in a more controlled environment, able to get that perfect sound. Singing on stage is freedom; it lets you fly.”