On a long, musical drive

Since music is an important part of my life, it forms a major chunk of all my weekends too. A lot of my weekends are spent in the studio and I really enjoy creating something new at that time. 

Since I am always with clients during the week, I like to work alone on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I find it a great time to compose and thankfully, I don’t get that many calls either. So it’s a good time to be myself in my creative space and a beautiful one at that.

At home, I just love spending time with my wife Varsha and hanging around with Hutchie, my Golden Retriever. 

Varsha and I prefer not to go to theatres or restaurants during the weekend as they are extremely crowded. But we enjoy going on long drives because that gives me a chance to do my favourite thing — listen to music. 

Though I listen to music in the studio too, being a musician, I end up critiquing it more than enjoying it at work. So a long drive helps me eliminate this problem.Driving down to Kanyakumari is one of our favourite activities. Earlier, I would make it a point to go there once a month but now, we go once in three to four months. 

The roads to Kanyakumari are just excellent and the place is around eight hours away. So what better way than listening to music and enjoying the journey? We usually start early in the morning, at around 4 am on a Saturday and take only one break in between. Once we reach the place, we check into a hotel, take a short nap and then drive back to Bengaluru. Earlier, we would stay for the sunset but since we have gone there many times now, it has become boring.  I love driving and the fact that I can listen to some good music makes me do it again and again.  

We also enjoy going  to other getaways like Ooty, Coorg and Mysuru. Even Hutchie loves going on a drive if there is a beautiful destination at the end of it.

His favourite place is Gokarna and we take him there often. Usually, we stay in Om Beach Resort and spend time at Namaste Cafe, which is one of the few cafes that allows dogs. Hutchie just loves running on the beach and swimming over there. Many a time, we hire a boat and head to the backwaters of Gokarna where Hutchie stretches himself, swims and chases birds. 

Nowadays, we also head to the US a lot of times but my schedule is very hectic there. If I don’t have back-to-back meetings on a weekend, we  head out to places nearby like Miami and Washington. In Miami, we stay at the Grand Beach Hotel which offers a panoramic view of the ocean and we always stay above the 20th floor. The view is always great from the top. 

As told to Deepa Natarajan Lobo