I was born in Calcutta on 30th July 1962. Having moved to New Delhi in 1972, I live here now but the occasional tour takes me to many exotic places in India & abroad.
In 1983, I majored in English Lit. from the prestigious  Hindu College & then  studied Law but quit in my final year ( to my great relief!) to pursue my passion-MUSIC…..& thankfully, by the grace of God, one has not looked back since.
While in Hindu, I performed professionally in our college band ‘GRAFFITTI’ & then got on to form my first Rock band ‘WHITE FANG’ with whom I sang all covers & a few originals till we disbursed in 1983 after acquiring legendary rock status. By now I was ‘hooked’. Many other acts & experiments followed , but the ‘addiction’ for originals made me realise that I needed to go all the way quite  alone.
Being self-taught, I depended on my gut-feel & instincts. I found a brilliant performer & friend in Neeraj Shreedhar & together we realised our dream of doing an album…… & ‘DISCOVERY’ was born. It went on to become the ‘forefather’ of  a whole new genre that is now known as Hindi Pop. Released by T-series on Christmas Eve 1985 it made quite a stir nationwide. Neeraj left for Sweden where he got married & settled down in pursuit of greater recognition as a rock vocalist in the West. Today he’s the frontman of  the popular Hindi Pop  group ‘BOMBAY VIKINGS’ & a star in his own right.
Meanwhile I learnt some very important lessons-I needed to be my own producer & do my own thing & perhaps only then can I do justice to my vision &  projects. I also learnt the difference  between the urge to earn ‘stardom’ &  the ‘sacred desire’ to follow the ‘dictations of my soul’ in order to address my creative impulses &  to direct my energies  to give meaning to my  own music in a world where charts & numbers have replaced  ‘originality’ with so-called ‘shelf-life’ which determine  ‘hits’ & ‘misses’ as the main mantra of the music industry.
Music to me became a personalised pilgrimage & a deeply ‘spiritual’ pursuit. It’s my private testimony of the times I live in &  I try to express these amazing  experiences of life in the ‘nowness’ of existence as a much needed catharsis to be able to go beyond the ‘cosmetics’ & hopefully embrace life as it comes ….& goes ……..ever so seamlessly ……I recognise the eternally terminal proposition of  this life that we live in & the multiple manifestations  that alter our perceptions forever…..& yet it all somehow connects & binds us all in a most fascinating maze of myriad relationships…..As we say ‘the show must go on’…..& my big problem is with the word ‘show’. Well,well,well!& what’s showing more or less is best left unsaid!        
     Today I’m a total pilgrim & creating music is my ‘moksha’. These realisations early on in life gave me direction & much needed focus to continue to strive to make roads where there were none before. Luckily everything just fell in place &  soon I was making waves in creative circuits  producing award-winning corporate  anthems, memorable jingles, path-breaking title scores for TV serials (at one stage there were 17 serials on air every week) &  not surprisingly a lotta money too! By 1992 I had my own mini-Midi studio in my bedroom & I still work from there & I still love working on dos! My buddies call me ‘cave man’, ‘fossil’, ‘G-rex’ & I simply adore these  wonderful titles  but the crowning glory comes when absolute strangers admit in unison-‘Gautamda, you’re awesome….unbelieveable!’ Thanks to modern technology I’ve been able to do all these things without any recording contract. It truly gave me the power to constantly do my R&D, to compose & de-compose, to create & re-create & come thus far. I always maintain that with technology one is empowered but unfortunately I know too many composers who’ve enslaved themselves to it & it shows in whatever they produce. It’s nice to be ‘in’ with the changing times & be clever but it means absolutely nothing if what one produces does’nt touch one’s soul! & I notice how a lot of modern music has become almost soulless…….it manages to hit the body  but sadly does nothing to the soul & ofcourse these are my own views & not meant to demean anyone anyway. To each his own! 
Anyway, I’ve said a lot…..now perhaps you may like to sample some of my stuff.
                                                         God Bless. Have a great life.


P.S. – I have also done voice-overs in English for Discovery channel and currently do a lot of such jobs corporate and product films and documentaries, including corporates like  HP, Microsoft, Ranbaxy, Siemens and more.