Fame through the eyes of a beginner

For some singers, it takes years to enter the mainstream Bollywood fame. But for 24 year-old Aastha Gill, the journey was smooth and surprising.

Hailing from Vikaspuri of West Delhi, the DJ Waley Babu singer is simple, lively and never knew that her life would take a leap overnight.

“I knew where I was coming from but I didn’t know where I was going,” says Gill. Singing has always been a crucial part of her life. Without any professional training or learning, Gill credits her skills to her father, Jaspal Singh, who is a Mumbai based Punjabi folk and Indian classical music director.

She tells Metrolife about her flash like entry into Bollywood and how everything took shape in the past year and a half years of her singing career.

“I used to perform regularly in my school functions as well as my college programmes. So it was in one of my college events only where we had Raftaar (Dilin Nair) as the judge. He appreciated my voice texture but I didn’t know that he was so serious. At that time I was working with an ad agency, just trying to explore what I really wanted to do. And then after a few months, he called me saying that I need to immediately leave for Mumbai for an important song,” recalls Gill.

After her first track, she was then seen voicing Sonam Kapoor in Abhi toh party shuru hui hai — from the movie Khoobsurat (2014) — with Badshah (Aditya Prateek Singh Sisodia).

“This song too was no less than a surprise for me. I just got a call from Badshah bhai about my ticket to Mumbai. It was like at first you have no idea and at the very next moment you are voicing Sonam Kapoor. I knew that the song had a power but the way it picked gradually was amazing,” she tells Metrolife.

So in an industry where most people end up struggling their way to limelight, Gill had it all set and easy for her.

“Things have been lucky for me and I would love to make full use of it. However, I did have my set of challenges and struggles. Nobody knew who Aastha Gill was. Standing right next to Badshah and performing wasn’t easy. I knew I had to match his level.”

She now plans to release her solo album and get established as an independent artist. “My beginning has been in such a way that I’m ‘into it’. But now I have to conquer all the other areas that people are in, for my own survival,” says Gill, adding that planning to go solo will be the biggest challenge for her.