Shashwat Sachdev on creating music for Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar and turning to Hanumankind on Ranveer Singh’s advice

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Sachdev, who has long been absent from the star list of composers in the Hindi film industry, says he had been circling the sound (of Jogi) since working on Veere Di Wedding (2018), one of his early projects. “It lived with me for years before Dhurandhar. When you work with a song that has existed for decades, the responsibility is emotional as much as musical. The process was never about recreation. It was about re-contextualisation,” says Sachdev. He says once the core structure was in place, Ranveer Singh suggested getting Hanumankind in. “That suggestion shifted the entire energy. Hanuman introduced a present-day voice into a long-standing cultural memory, allowing the song to live simultaneously in the past and the present,” says Sachdev, who is also at the helm of the sequel Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge, the teaser of which featuring Grammy-winning singer Doja Cat took social media by storm this week. The film releases on March 19.

Dhar, according to Sachdev, is quite particular about the music of his film, “sometimes even more than I am,” he says. “The filmmaker brings the emotional architecture, and I allow myself to be used to write what that world needs,” he says.

Shashwat Sachdev.

Eleven-track Dhurandhar leans heavily on music that the audience in the subcontinent already knows. Be it Usha Uthup’s Rambha ho, Asha Bhosle’s Piya tu or Roshan and Sahir Ludhianvi’s famed qawwali Na toh karvaan ki talash that is inspired by Fateh Ali Khan-Mubarak Ali Khan’s composition and Sufi poet Ameer Bakhsh Sabri’s lyrics, Sachdev fluently blends these nostalgic numbers with contemporary beats, so much so that the final sonic structures sit quite naturally with the film. “The contemporary textures were not meant to modernise the qawwali, but to allow it to speak in the present tense,” says Sachdev.

Growing up in Jaipur, Sachdev was drawn to music because of his parents, who listened to Hindustani classical music, poetry and film music with equal affection. He began training in Western classical piano early on and over time, the distinctions blurred, creating an interesting music vocabulary. “Looking back, I realise I was absorbing multiple musical languages long before I consciously knew I would need them,” says Sachdev, who decided early on that music was not going to be just a hobby. In his mid-teens, his parents began supporting that decision more seriously. He moved to Los Angeles in 2011, where he studied sound design, film scoring and musical production.

When he returned and settled in Mumbai, his parents as well as his wife supported him during the initial years while he assisted and observed composers. “That kind of support allows an artist to engage honestly with uncertainty. Preparation is the only thing you truly control. Over time, if you stay ready, timing finds you,” says Sachdev, whose first project was Veere Di Wedding (2018). However, it was Phillauri, starring Anushka Sharma and Diljit Dosanjh, which released a year earlier, establishing his credentials and signalling confidence in his approach. “The strong critical appreciation helped create belief around my voice,” says Sachdev. But it was Veere Di Wedding that was the turning point. Bass gira de raja was an instant hit. While his Punjabi roots allowed him to find the sweet spot where he was comfortably threading folk idioms and contemporary sounds into music, they also aligned comfortably with the demands of mainstream Hindi cinema. “I’ve been fortunate to work with collaborators who have embraced me with generosity and respect, regardless of age,” says Sachdev.

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His collaboration with Dhar began with the background score for Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), for which he won a National Award.

Dhurandhar, like some previous projects, didn’t rely on easily hummable themes but is more invested in texture. But Sachdev does not frame Dhurandhar as a departure from melody. He believes that the film embraces melody where the “story asks for it” and “restraint where the psychology demands it”, and that his role is not to impose an ideology or to tell his personal story through a film. “We were not composing individual songs in isolation. We were building melodic and emotional universes… Every film carries multiple sonic and emotional grammars within it. In the same film, you may have a love ballad like Gehra hua, which is openly intimate and elsewhere music written for conflict or psychological movement that leans into rhythm, texture or hip-hop language,” says Sachdev.

His work has also taken him beyond the Hindi film industry. He is the first Indian composer to collaborate with Hans Zimmer, one of the most influential composers known for his music in The Lion King, Inception, The Dark Knight and recently, Dune. He worked with Zimmer and composer and arranger James Everingham for the soundtrack of British crime series Virdee (2025). Sachdev recalls how the two were curious about his cultural vocabulary and instinctive way of thinking. “That kind of exchange dissolves hierarchy and allows genuine collaboration to take place… I was never asked to be anything other than myself,” says Sachdev, who is giving finishing touches to Dhurandhar 2 as well as his Telugu debut, The India House. He is also busy creating independent, non-film music. “That balance keeps the creative process honest,” says Sachdev.