BENGALURU: It all started with a Soundcloud upload for Bipul Chettri and following that there has been no looking back for this Nepali singer-songwriter from Darjeeling.
“Wildfire was the first song I wrote in Nepali, my mother tongue, and I casually uploaded it on Soundcloud in 2013. Never had I expected the kind of response it garnered,” says Chettri. The song received close to 1 lakh hits within a few days.
Soon came another Soundcloud release called Asaar, which was highly acclaimed by listeners and critics alike. Why not write a few more songs, thought Chettri.
“After the kind of response Wildfire received, the rest of the songs came quite naturally. I wrote six songs for the album ‘Sketches of Darjeeling’ within a year,” he says over an email interview.
The album was out in 2014 and Chettri became the top-selling artiste on Oklisten.com, one of nation’s top online music vendors. To his own surprise, his folk-contemporary singing beat Indian Ocean the same year, who were out with their album Tandanu.
Chettri is an artiste with a folksy heart and whose songs touch a chord with almost all Nepali-speaking people who are away from home. His second album Maya too is about the simplicity of life in the mountains. “I think that is why most people have this connection with my music. It reminds them of the local sounds, the weather, the people in the hills, and especially their home,” he says.
And he would know about missing home because when he is not travelling the world to perform, he is teaching at a school in New Delhi - 1,530 km away from his home Kalimpong, Darjeeling.
Before he became a professional musician, Chettri was a teacher at Vasant Valley School in Delhi. Today, he heads the department of art at the same school.
His penchant for music is something he attributes to his father Late Nirendra Mohan Chettri, who was a revered singer-songwriter himself. “I never sat down to write folk songs. It just came naturally. It was my father who influenced me. He passed away when I was young but I think his music was way ahead of his times. The songs Ram Sailee and Kahiley Kahi were both written and composed by him,” says Chettri.
He began singing ever since his schooldays. He then went on to do a correspondence graduation course in western classical guitar from Trinity College, London. Today, the school boy from Kalimpong has toured the UK, the US, Australia, Japan and UAE among other places with his band members, who are his support system. “They help me out with my music. Also, my wife is usually the first person to listen to my tunes while I’m composing them,” he says.
And how has life changed for Chettri after all the stardom? “It hasn’t changed much,” he says and adds, “Except for the rehearsals with the band and the studio visits.” He is now all set for some more performances in Nepal and India in the next few months and is also ready to release his new single ‘Basant’ soon.
Chettri’s live performances are known for his connection with the audience which is both palpable and nostalgic. This 36-year-old is no rockstar persona, but is a simple man whose songs have touched hearts beyond language barriers.