In the early 1990s, Delhi’s rock scene was an after-hours universe of college festivals that ran till sunrise, hostel corridors echoing with Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, and bands stretching songs into 20-minute jams without worrying about streaming metrics or audience retention graphs. Parikrama was born around this time. Formed in 1991, the Delhi rock veterans are now celebrating 35 years together.
“Parikrama started as a four-month project,” founding member Subir Malik recalls. “I was supposed to join my family business, so I thought this was my last chance to play the music I grew up loving before saying goodbye to music forever.” So the story of Parikrama is also the story of a disappearing Delhi—one primarily built on live music people experienced together instead of scrolling past alone.
Delhi before algorithms
Long before music discovery became app-driven, Delhi’s rock culture survived almost entirely through word of mouth. Posters, hostel gossip, photocopied notices and college circuits became the city’s underground distribution network. Back then, Delhi University festivals functioned almost like music communes. Shows at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences festivals stretched till dawn. Shri Ram College of Commerce hosted overnight bonfires where students sat through five-hour-long sets. Audiences headbanged to AC/DC and Iron Maiden one moment and listened to extended progressive rock jams the next.
“It was like a living mini-Woodstock festival of 1969,” Malik says.
The social culture around rock bands was equally intense. Rivalries between colleges like Kirori Mal College, Hansraj College and St. Stephen's College spilled into festival circuits, but Parikrama soon began attracting audiences far beyond campus loyalties. Says Malik: “Even today, people living in Amsterdam or Chandigarh still message saying, ‘Yeh band humare saamne bana tha.’”
While Mumbai became closely tied to Bollywood playback music, Delhi evolved through college bands and campus festivals. "Every college had a band—and most of them played rock," notes Malik.
That ecosystem helped create one of India’s strongest live band circuits during the 1990s and early 2000s. Venues like DV8 in Connaught Place and Mezz in New Friends Colony became rehearsal grounds for generations of musicians. Malik also credits late musician and promoter Amit Chatterjee for helping transform India’s independent rock ecosystem by pushing original music into venues and cities that had previously depended almost entirely on covers.
Though Parikrama initially formed around classic rock covers, the band slowly transitioned into original songwriting with tracks like 'Till I’m No One Again', eventually becoming one of India’s defining independent rock acts.
Music for the soul
One of Parikrama’s most defining decisions came early: nobody in the band would depend financially on the band itself. Malik calls it “the smartest thing” they ever did. “If your household is financially secure,” he says, “you can play rock and roll all your life.”
At a time when English rock occupied only a niche corner of Indian music, the band focused instead on sustainability. For the first five years, members reinvested earnings back into equipment instead of paying themselves.
“The band started off with a love of playing live and it is still the same,” Malik says. “We never wanted to change the music we grew up loving.”
Rather than chasing record-label deals, the band focused on building a live audience, freely circulating CDs across college campuses and encouraging students to duplicate and share them.
Even though Parikrama’s music is written in English, many of its stories emerged directly from Indian realities rather than Western imitation.
The band’s songwriting often grew from newspaper reports, social anxieties and emotional responses to real-world events. Their track 'But It Rained' emerged from stories surrounding missing soldiers and abducted foreigners in Kashmir, while 'Don’t Cut Me Down', written in 1997, addressed deforestation long before environmental conversations became mainstream in India.
Their 2023 track 'Translucent Night', meanwhile, explored India’s organ donation crisis. “We realised the songs were never about politics in the traditional sense,” Malik says. “They were about people.”
At the same time, the band resisted becoming exclusively issue-oriented. Songs like 'Open Skies' celebrate road trips through Uttarakhand, while fantasy-inspired tracks like 'Am I Dreaming?' draw from The Lord of the Rings. “Life cannot always be serious,” Malik says.
Carrying Sonam Sherpa forward
No conversation about Parikrama’s recent years can avoid the loss of guitarist Sonam Sherpa, who passed away in 2020. Sherpa had been central to the band’s songwriting and identity for decades.
“When I was returning from the cremation itself, I called everyone and said we cannot shut this down,” Malik recalls. “If we ever do that, that would be very unfair to him.”
The pandemic lockdown that followed gave the band time to revisit old demos, unreleased material and archived recordings. Eventually, newer songwriting collaborations emerged through tracks like Translucent Night and Demons of Time while preserving the emotional core Sherpa helped shape.
During performances today, the band still plays videos of Sherpa during solos. “There are moments on stage where it becomes emotional,” Malik says.
Finding new audiences
Three and a half decades later, Parikrama’s audience now includes parents who first saw the band in college and children discovering them online. Several younger musicians today have credited Parikrama performances for inspiring them to pursue music.
Malik sees that continuity as one of the band’s greatest rewards. “Younger kids are still picking up guitars because of live rock music,” he says.
The band’s next phase is aimed directly at those listeners. Parikrama plans to release 50 original songs over the next five years, a move Malik describes as an attempt to reconnect younger audiences with rock music again. “Rock never became mainstream in India,” he says. “And honestly, as indie musicians we prefer it that way.”