First Person

Until his second year of college at the Pune Institute of Computer Technology, Mandar Agashe was what you'd call a regular guy. Average, but...

Until his second year of college at the Pune Institute of Computer Technology, Mandar Agashe was what you8217;d call a regular guy. Average, but hard-working student, boy-next-door looks, with an overpowering ambition to preside over his own software company. Not once did it ever flash across his mind that one day he would be sitting in a straight-backed chair in an executive suite, watching himself in a music video aired being on all the music channels in the country. Not once, that is, until he met John Lennon. Met, because there8217;s no other way you can explain the sort of thing that happened to Agashe after that. 8220;I heard the Beatles for the first time when a friend got a set of ten cassettes to college. There was something in those songs, especially in Lennon8217;s voice, that all I wanted to do after that was to learn to play the rhythm guitar,8221; recalls Agashe with that boyish smile of his. 8220;I was so obsessed with it that I failed my third-year exams,8221; he says. 8220;Initially, I joined the college band and thenformed my own with some friends in Pune8221;.

Today, after almost eight years of experimenting with music, this 29-year-old Marathi boy is all over the music channels with his debut Hindi pop album Nazar Nazar. Apart from playing versions of Beatles hits, Agashe composed songs that were 8220;inspired by all the beautiful girls in Pune.8221; But it was only in his final year that Agashe met Hridy-anath Mangeshkar. Recalls Agashe: 8220;He was also a Beatles fan like me. When I showed him my songs, he signed me on as a co-music director for the Marathi film Hey Geet Jeevan Nache8221;.

So impressed with Agashe was the legendary father of the legendary daughters that he gave him the freedom to compose an entire song 8212; Khulya khulya re pavasa8217;. 8220;I was over the moon when I learnt that Ashaji had agreed to sing the song I had composed for the film,8221; gushes Agashe. 8220;It was a dream come true8221;.

8220;Honest8221; is how Agashe would like to describe his music. 8220;I compose what I feel,8221; he says, claiming that he has never made a deliberate attempt to categorise his compositions. Yet he admits his debut Hindi album, which also happens to be his first foray into singing, is a collection of love songs.But more than the composition of the songs, Agashe recalls how nervous he was during the shooting of the Nazar Nazar video. 8220;It took us more than three days and I requested the directors, Bunty and Prashant, both first-timers like me, to shoot my sequence on the last day,8221; he says. 8220;Even now, I can8217;t recognise myself each time I see the video. They have done such a terrific job.8221; So much for someone who8217;s a close family friend of noted theatre and movie actor, Mohan Agashe 8212; they aren8217;t related, though they share a rare last name.

Being the son of the recently elected BCCI vice-president, Agashe can8217;t get over being the odd one out in the family. 8220;Nobody in my family was remotely interested in music,8221; he says. 8220;And here I am doing exactly what sportsmen don8217;t do singing and partying late into the night.8221; And, unlike the rest of the family, he idolises Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Michael Jackson and the Backstreet Boys, not Sachin or Azhar.

Back in 8217;94, on a visit to the US, he met Mike Wilson, a sound recording engineer at Indianapolis. 8220;He introduced me to three other recording engineers and we recorded an album in three days,8221; Agashe remembers. As luck would have it, the album still hasn8217;t seen the light of day. But after he8217;s through with Nazar Nazar, Agashe hopes to release this album finally. Considering that he claims his Marathi pop album, Achanak, was a roaring success, there8217;s no saying what8217;ll happen next.