Nagpur: If music be the glue for friendships, then play on

Back in 1994, 18-year-old Ameya Hete would beat sticks on his pillow, pretending to be a drummer as he listened to classic rock on his music system. His friend Anurag Bagri was learning to play the keyboard and two others — Mayur Pandey and Udayan Patil — would strum the guitar. Their love for music was the glue that kept them together.
The rock band scene in Nagpur in the 90s was not exactly very happening. But cable TV was slowly introducing the youth to music channels. It was Mayur’s idea that they form a band.
The first performance was to take place in the garage of Mayur’s uncle and the audience was to comprise the parents and relatives of all four friends. The band members arrived carrying a small Casio to be played by Anurag, Ameya got some tin boxes and his sticks for the drum and was also to be the vocalist of the band.
Mayur and Udayan strummed on two hand-me-down guitars. Udayan also made an amplifier from a speaker. Keeping in mind their audience, the band played ‘Hotel California’ and ‘Summer of 69’. This went down well with the parents and they decided to support this initiative in terms of getting them better instruments.
The band got a new set of cymbals and a keyboard and an invitation to play at the social gathering of Ramdeobaba Engineering college where Ameya and Anurag were also studying. They played a good number of Hindi film songs too like ‘pehla nasha pehle khumaar, papa kehte hain and pukarta chala huoon main’. The crowd loved it.
For the next four years, the band, christened Kalki, performed at various venues and events. For reasons even they still can’t give, they however refused an invite from LAD College. Kalki also got a sound engineer and a manager when Harshal Ninawe joined it. Pinkoo Joseph. who was a popular singer in the city during the 90s. would also perform with Kalki at different gigs.
When the four of them graduated, they split and moved to different cities and countries. Mayur and Udyan went to Pune and Amey and Anurag to USA. Music was left behind. They kept in touch and would keep returning to Nagpur but rarely met.
In 2015, the four friends got together for Ameya’s 40th birthday. “We were thrown on stage by Ameya’s wife and once again we performed Hotel California. And we were good,” remembers Mayur.
Ameya had moved to Mumbai in 2006 and had set up his own business. Mayur was flying with an international airline, Anurag was working for a tech company in US and Udyan had returned to Nagpur and had his own firm now. The friends returned back to their base but kept in touch through music.
“In 2017, the three of us barring Anurag decided to do some recce for another show. Mayur came from Dubai where he was based and we met at my farmhouse where we practised couple of Pink Floyd numbers,” said Ameya.
“We would message Anurag but he wouldn’t respond till we began posting videos of our jamming sessions,” says Mayur. “When he watched us play again, he got excited and messaged that he would like to be a part of this,” adds Udayan.
The band still needed a vocalist and lots of equipment. “I approached Sandeep Baraskar who supplies sound equipment. He also plays the guitar. He helped us with the equipment and also joined us,” says Udayan.
A lot of research went into the kind of instruments they would buy. “We now had the financial wherewithal to invest in it. Anurag lugged his state-of-the-art keyboard from US when he came down for these jamming sessions and left it here. What we now have is way up the game,” informs Ameya.
The band also grew from four to eight members with Sandeep joining as lead guitarist and Mayur bringing in Vishal Gaikwad as vocalist with whom he used to perform in Dubai. The others who joined included Sumit Bahl on the keyboards as Anurag could not travel frequently from US and Anant Waghmare on bass. “Vishal shifted to guitar and sound so we are still with Ameya as the lead vocalist,” adds Anurag.
The group would meet at Ameya’s farmhouse for jamming and they even put up a show once again for their families in June 2019 on its sprawling lawns. But it was a disaster as rain and storm blew it away.
“We had to move everything inside and still did manage to perform and had a great time as our children who watched us together for the first time were blown away with our performances,” the members of Kalki say. It was here that they decided to have a regular concert in January 2021.
Covid interrupted all plans and the group didn’t meet physically but continued their jamming sessions via zoom calls. “Later, we came up with this date of December 16, 2022 at Nagpur. This time we have played what we have always wanted to, Pink Floyd, Dire straits, Metallica and Deep Purple as we now have the best of technical and instrumental support to pull this off,” says Ameya.
The band kept its date with the city. But rain once again played the spoilsport. The aesthetically done up stage with laser lights had to be abandoned as they had to shift the equipment indoors. But what a night it was for the four friends as they once again performed before a home crowd that kept screaming for encores.