Ricky recorded music for client on exam day, recalls father

A day after 33-year-old Ricky Kej, the composer from the City won a Grammy award, his father Dr Gyan Kej, a general physician, went about his usual business at his clinic in Indiranagar.  

Ask him about his son’s enormous feat and Dr Gyan lights up immediately. “I am extremely proud of him. I was able to watch only a minute of his Grammy speech, but I think it was one of the best I have ever heard. It was very fluent and very precise,” he said. His mother Pammi said that she was “very proud and happy” for her son. “We did not help him in any way in his pursuit of music. He is a self-made man who started from scratch,” he said. Gyan said, “I have seen him really struggle. He bought a second-hand guitar from his own pocket money and learnt it without anyone’s help. I did not give him any money, yet he built his studio. I used to feel sorry for him carrying big instruments while he was a very small boy.” Having spent a major part of his life in the US working in New York, West Virginia and North Carolina, Gyan decided to head back to India in 1986, by when Ricky, who was born in the US, was already a 7-year-old.

Ricky enrolled in Bishop Cotton Boys School and Cathedral High School in the City, after which he completed his bachelors in dental surgery (BDS) from Oxford Dental College on Hosur Road.

“I did not have any problem with him pursuing music. However, he promised me that he would become a doctor,” said Dr Gyan. He remembers an instance when Ricky had an exam during his college days. Far from studying, “he was busy recording music for a client”. Ricky has also composed music for five Kannada films - Accident, Venkata in Sankata, Crazy Kutumba and Ondu Rupayalli Eradu Preethi.