One is just a number

An artiste who parted ways with his musical partner is enjoying his 'loneliness' with a new EP

When things fall apart, they don't have to disintegrate. It was around 2018 that Arsh Sharma parted ways with Srijan Mahajan, the drummer with whom he had started FuzzCulture, a musical project that blended electronic elements with an organic sound. But it wasn't an acrimonious separation. There was no bad blood. It was simply a case of one person pursuing other interests, and the other letting him be. If you love someone, let them go.

Sharma tells us that he and Mahajan ran a studio in Delhi together. But he wanted to move to Mumbai since there was more commercial work happening there. "So we decided to work separately. The studio stayed with him, and I retained FuzzCulture [as a solo act]. Srijan was actually quite gracious about it," Sharma admits.

It's as this one-man army that he has now launched Strange Cities, an EP with five tracks that has a less aggressive sound than the FuzzCulture of yore. Is the mellowness because of Mahajan's thrashing drums being absent? "Not really. It might just be age."

All right, but does he feel a sense of loneliness after Mahajan's absence? "I initially did, but I am now used to my loneliness. I wouldn't want to trade it. I like being a lonely boy." Sharma adds, however, that he misses the feedback that he would get from Mahajan. He misses the back and forth that is inevitable when two people decide to make music together. And going ahead, he does want to feel a little less lonely as time moves on. "Maybe I can find someone I can travel with, someone with whom I can have a brief rendezvous."

That's in the future. As of now, the artiste is fulfilling his destiny in Mumbai, the reason he left the National Capital. "It's been interesting because after our partnership broke off, I was working with independent people who I didn't know so well. I got out of my comfort zone. I learnt how to hate my life," Sharma says.

There's less hate now, three years down the line. Strange Cities might be the name of his EP, but Mumbai doesn't seem that strange anymore. It's a new life he's built here, one that lets him "even make some money", which means that things have more or less worked out after he decided to walk the lonely road.

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