Boys in the Hood

Their songs are all the rage at weddings, sangeets and the corner club. And the music composers of chart-topping numbers such as Baby Doll, Chittiyan Kalaiyan, credit their success to a Shammi Kapoor song. 'As kids, Manmeet would dress me up as a girl and we would both perform the song Aaja Aaja Main Hun Pyaar Tera,' laughs Harmeet Singh, the younger brother of the musician duo, Meet Bros. 'We were the go-to entertainment for every family gathering. We were called `nautanki' by all our relatives."
Born in an affluent family in Gwalior, music as a career was not something that the brothers had even considered.Their father ran a successful liquor business in Madhya Pradesh and hoped that his sons would take over the reins after him. 'But owning a liquor enterprise in MP is risky business,' shares Manmeet, who is older to Harmeet by a year. 'This was the famous Chambal region, home of the dacoits. We were even once shot at as kids."
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As a safety measure, the boys were packed off to The Scindia School -'the prestigious boarding school in our very own backyard', they say -and it was here that the dormant musical interests of the brothers came to fore.'Scindia is where we really took to music,' says Manmeet. 'Though we didn't train in music formal -in fact, till today we remain self-taught musicians -I would bunk classes and tinker around in the music room. We never took it seriously though. Our aim was to just entertain people."
And the brothers participated at every school function and became known for their impromptu gigs. 'Yet, nobody who knew us then, will recog nise us now. I weighed 120 kilos and Harmeet was about 110 kilos. Besides, both of us wore turbans,' says Manmeet, who chopped his hair off during his college days. Harmeet, who followed his brother, says, 'The benefit of a boarding school is that you always have an audience and an encouraging one at that."
In the late 1990s, the brothers headed to Mumbai to pursue their higher studies much against their father's displeasure, who wished for them to complete their education in Delhi. 'Moving to Mumbai was a conscious decision. For we wanted to something on our own. Delhi was as good as Gwalior as we had a lot of extended family in the Capital,' says Manmeet. 'Besides, Mumbai agreed with us. In one year, I lost 25 kilos and Harmeet lost 22."
And the city indeed suited them well. It was while studying at the Sydenham College that the two set up their own band and became a regular fixture at the college festival scene. 'The kind of overwhelming appreciation we received, made us take ourselves seriously. Until then, we thought that we were just having fun," says Harmeet. 'Honestly, hume toh aaj tak nahin pata ki hum talented hain bhi ya nahin."
The two have even tried their hand out in acting, with Manmeet dabbling in television soaps and Harmeet in commercials. 'But that was a short stint and was a means to an end," they point out. 'We always gravitated back to music."
They revisited an English rap song that they wrote in school ' 'We are two little brothers, Jogi n Barnala, wherever we go we have a time that is gala" -that became the headlining song of their first album, Boond, in 2002. 'It was a massive hit," beams Manmeet. 'That song had always been lucky for us. We won music competitions in college with it."
While their mother has always remained a constant fan, their father never really warmed up to the idea of them pursuing music as their fulltime source of bread and butter. 'Our mother always encouraged us. She herself wanted to be a model in her younger days, so she made sure that we never gave up on our hopes and dreams,' says an emotional Harmeet.
Three years after their debut, the duo went through a lean phase. They, in fact, returned to Gwalior and started to handle the family business. 'By 2005, the pop music industry was dead.CD sales had slumped and contemporary music tastes were dominated by Bollywood. But we never gave up. We ventured into the remix scene, and sang for Dandiya nights in Ahmedabad," shares Manmeet.
In 2014, the brothers made a comeback. Television-turned-film producer Ekta Kapoor got them to compose a song that portrayed Sunny Leone in all her glory in the controversial flick, 'Ragini MMS 2'. 'She told us to take inspiration from Sunny's persona, and that's how Baby Doll evolved," says Harmeet. They followed it up Pink Lips (2014), Chittiyan Kalaiyan (2015), High Heels (2016) and Most Wanted Munda (2016), songs which broke sound records. While many music directors and composers obsess over getting the sound right, the duo, believes in spontaneous evolution of a tune. For a recently released film, they composed a song (Cham Cham) using mridangam and flute as the song is set in Kerala.'We don't have a fixed process as such. Our motto is `jaisa desh waisa bhaes', we stick to the brief that is provided to us," signs off Manmeet.
- By Ektaa Malik
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