On a humid afternoon in Mumbai, as traffic drones in the distance and a ceiling fan clicks lazily above us, Gini sits on the office couch, cradling a cup of chai. There’s a stillness to her in this moment—but if you listen closely, you can almost hear the symphony of stories she carries within her. Not just songs, but lived experiences, emotional notes, quiet griefs, loud joys, and countless side quests. She has the kind of presence that feels both new and familiar, like flipping through an old diary written in someone else’s handwriting.
“I’ve lived in almost fifteen places,” she says. “The most amount of time I spent in one place was ten months.” The daughter of a fighter pilot and an author, Gini’s life was shaped by constant motion. From Suratgarh to Hashimara, Ambala to Lucknow, her childhood was a revolving door of towns, schools, and new beginnings. “These were all rural areas. Most people haven’t even heard of them. But for me, they were home. For a while.” There’s no trace of restlessness when she says this—only a quiet acceptance, like she’s made peace with the impermanence of things.
Despite the ever-changing landscape, music remained the one constant. “Whenever we moved, we’d go by car. Just the four of us—my parents, my sister, and I. There was always music playing. My parents had this CD case filled with old hits—Bhupen Hazarika, Hariharan, Harry Belafonte. I’d sit in the backseat and sing along,” she recalls. It wasn’t formal training, but it was formative. Singing became the thread that tied all her homes together—a quiet companion that moved with her, stayed with her, when nothing else did. Over time, that comfort grew into something more—a sound that was soft, honest, and personal. You can hear traces of those early car rides in her music even now: gentle melodies, minimal production, and a voice that sounds like it’s speaking just to you. Her style wasn’t planned—it came together slowly. It’s the kind of voice that doesn’t ask for your attention but ends up keeping it anyway.
When Gini was six, a music teacher suggested to her parents that she might benefit from classical training. Her parents, who strongly believed in letting their children make their own choices, left it up to her. “They were always like, try everything,” and so, Gini gave it a shot. A harmonium tutor began visiting their home, but it didn’t take long for boredom to set in. “I’m a visual learner,” the 19-year-old explains. “I realized just by watching his hands, I could understand what he was playing. I did three or four classes, tops. By the end of it, I knew how to play the harmonium, but then I was like, okay, next.” There’s a flicker of amusement in her eyes when she talks about these stories, like she’s looking back at a younger version of herself who couldn’t sit still for anything that didn’t spark a fire.
Her parents didn’t insist she continue. “They were like, cool, you don’t want to continue? That’s fine. But the harmonium is here—see what you want to do with it.” And that’s how it started—the skill collecting. “I’ve always loved collecting skills like Pokémon,” she says with a grin. “Anything I found interesting, I’d try. Once I reached a level where I felt I could say, yeah, I know how to do this, I’d move on. One skill collected.” It wasn’t about mastering it all, rather, it was about curiosity and a quiet rebellion against linear paths.
There was calligraphy, origami, horse riding, and even a bit of coding. But with music, the pull was deeper. More personal.
She remembers a sudden urge to learn the guitar while visiting her grandparents in Dehradun a few years ago. “I just woke up one morning and said, I want to play the guitar. My grandpa—he’s this retired army officer, super disciplined but very supportive—just said, ‘Chalo.’ We stopped at a store on Rajpur Road, and he asked me which guitar I wanted. I picked the midnight blue one.” She’d never played before, but within hours of bringing it home, she had figured out the lead melodies to ‘A Thousand Years’ and ‘Moves Like Jagger’ entirely by ear. “It felt natural. Like I had played it in a past life.” There’s something striking about how casually she says this.
Most kids start the guitar with basic chords. Gini skipped straight to fingerstyle, “because it looked cooler.” She taught herself through YouTube videos. Her parents enrolled her in classes again, but the pattern repeated itself: she got bored, dropped out, and went back to learning on her own.
Around the same time, she began writing—first poems, then lyrics—and before long, her songs became a way to piece together the world around her. “I realized I could write. And I could play. So I thought, let’s combine both.” By age ten, Gini was already using music to make sense of her ever-shifting world—a way to hold onto feelings, memories, and fragments of herself through every move. But it wasn’t until years later, in the wake of grief, that she discovered the weight her songs could truly carry.
“I realized I could write. And I could play. So I thought, let’s combine both.”
In January 2021, her father survived an aircraft crash. “He ejected safely,” she says quietly, “but I didn’t really process it. I just went into overdrive. My sister was little. My mom was shaken. So I snapped into big sister mode and just kept going.” For months, the trauma remained unspoken, buried beneath routine and resilience. Then, in May, the dam broke. Some emotions arrive softly, and others crash through the walls you didn’t know you’d built.
Her father’s squadron lost another pilot—a close family friend. The night the news came, Gini messaged her mother at 2:04 a.m.—“Is he…” At 3:30, her mother replied: “Still looking.” A few hours later, it was confirmed—he hadn’t made it. “That’s when it hit me. Not just his passing, but everything from January. What we’d almost lost. I didn’t know what to do with all of it.”
That’s when she sat at her piano and began to write.
What emerged was “Falling Asleep,” a song written from the deceased pilot’s imagined perspective, addressed to his wife—a message of comfort for the nights she couldn’t sleep. “When you feel like you can’t hear / just remember that I am here / I’m listening / So don’t fear falling asleep…” It came together quickly, unfiltered, like the emotion had been waiting to be let out. “It was written for her. I just wanted her to know he would’ve wanted her to rest. And maybe, in writing it, I was telling myself that too.”
Gini recorded a demo in her room — vocals on an iPad, with ambient sound and crickets chirping in the background. It wasn’t meant to be polished. It was meant to be honest.
That night, as per tradition, the squadron gathered at her home. About thirty people—pilots, families, friends—packed into the living room. Gini invited them into her room, where her piano sat by the window. “I told them, ‘This is what I think [the pilot] would say if he could.’ And I played the song.”
When she finished, there was silence. Some cried openly. Others stepped out to collect themselves. “These were the strongest people I know. And they were crying.” That moment became the turning point. “That was when I decided—this is what I want to do. If my words can help someone carry something they can’t say, if they can hold that kind of emotion… then this is it. I want to keep doing this for as long as I can.”
That quiet strength—of holding space for others while carrying her own grief—still lingers around Gini. You could feel it even on the day of her cover shoot. Gini showed up with a fever—cheeks flushed, visibly unwell but unwavering. Despite the lights, outfit changes, and long hours, her energy never dimmed. Her wit stayed razor-sharp. And on her wrist, always, was her father’s old watch—the same one he had been wearing during the crash. “It still works,” she says. “I never take it off.”
After “Falling Asleep,” something shifted—not just within Gini, but around her. The song wasn’t officially released yet, but the people who heard it couldn’t forget it. Word spread quietly, through family, through friends, through emotion. “I didn’t put it online right away. It felt too personal. But people kept telling me, ‘You need to share this.’” And so, months later, she did, releasing it independently when she was just 15. “I didn’t even know how to record properly,” she says. “I used GarageBand on an iPad. I didn’t know what mixing or mastering meant. I just hit record.” But that was part of its power. The rawness, the honesty — it resonated.
At the time, school was still online. Gini would sleep through Zoom lectures in the day and stay up late at night singing for strangers on Clubhouse (obviously under her parents’ supervision), with the audio-only app unexpectedly becoming her first stage. “There were these rooms where people would just play music. I’d go up, sing one of my songs, and leave,” she recalls. “It was anonymous and weird and beautiful. People would DM me saying, ‘I cried.’ That’s when I knew—this is bigger than me now.”
Her digital presence grew organically—no big strategy. No team. Just a girl with a guitar and a voice people didn’t want to forget. “I was in Class 10, just trying to finish homework and record songs in my cupboard,” she laughs. “But people were listening. And not just listening—they were feeling it.”
By the time she was 17, Gini had offers from two universities: the University of New South Wales in Sydney and Berklee College of Music. On paper, they were dream opportunities. But something inside her hesitated. She remembers the moment clearly. “I was walking with my dad, and I said, ‘I don’t want to go to college right now.’ I had this gut feeling. I wasn’t done building something here.” Instead, she asked him for ₹10,000—enough to book the cheapest flight to Mumbai.
With no backup plan, she landed in the city where dreams are chased — and often crushed — armed with two songs and a quiet confidence. “I told my label (Molfa Music), I want to record ‘Chaukhat’ and ‘Sukoon.’ They agreed. I was recording in between metros and meetings. It was chaos, but the good kind.”
That visit to Mumbai became the beginning of everything. She met producers she’d only known through DMs. Sat in on sessions. Took the metro from Khar to Sakinaka with her guitar on her back. “The city teaches you fast. It’s loud and unforgiving and absolutely magical.”
Meanwhile, she continued to upload snippets online—one-minute demos, fragments of verses, unfinished thoughts. One of those fragments would become “Ansuna.” “I’d just turned 18. I remember uploading a short verse and thinking nothing of it,” she says. “But suddenly, people started sharing it. There were comments, messages, people saying it felt like the inside of their head. It just spread.”
“Ansuna” was intimate, understated, and achingly honest—a meditation on what remains unspoken in relationships, and the agony of being heard too late. Gini recorded it in a quiet studio space, maintaining its fragile tone. When it dropped, it didn’t explode—it bloomed. Gently. Organically. And then everywhere. “It wasn’t even meant to be a big release,” she says. “I just put it out because it felt true. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do—say something true.”
The song landed her on Spotify Radar. Then came the Times Square billboard. Her DMs filled up with stories from strangers—people who saw themselves in the silences she wrote about. “It was overwhelming. But it also made me feel less alone. Like we were all in this big, quiet, shared space together.”
But one of her most definitive moments came soon after. She had her next song, “Chaukhat”—a delicate piece that leaned into her signature softness, subtlety, and silence—all ready to go. But her team was hesitant. “Some people on my team were like, ‘It’s not upbeat enough. It won’t land on radio. It’s too gentle.’” Gini didn’t argue. She did something better. “I went live on Instagram every night for two weeks and sang “Chaukhat.” Every time someone commented, ‘Please release this,’ I took a screenshot. At the end, I compiled all the screenshots into a PDF and sent it to my team. I said, ‘Look. People want this.’”
The song was released, and the reception to it was more than validation—it was proof of concept. She didn’t need to chase trends or write for the algorithm. She just had to write from where it hurt, from where it healed. That approach soon became her blueprint for everything, not just the music, but the world she wanted to build around it.
What came next was less of a campaign and more of a feeling, one that took shape in the form of The Cozy Tour.
The idea was simple—no big venues, no barricades, no detached performances. Just a room, a guitar, a piano, and Gini. “I wanted to create a space that felt like a living room—gaddis on the floor, fairy lights, handwritten notes,” she says. “I didn’t want to be on a stage, above everyone. I wanted to be with them.” In eight cities, from Delhi to Pune, Bangalore to Mumbai, Gini brought people together—strangers who entered a room quietly and left it with tear-streaked faces, song lyrics scribbled in their journals, and sometimes even new friendships. “It felt like a big exhale,” she says. “People would tell me, ‘This is the first time I’ve felt okay in a while.’”
Each performance was part concert, part conversation. She didn’t just sing; she told stories about the songs, the people behind them, the moments that led to them. “I’d play a song, then pause and say, ‘Let me tell you why I wrote this.’ That context matters. Especially when the songs are soft — you have to let people into the why.”
The decision to do the tour independently before releasing a full album, without any label pressure, was a risk. But it also gave her control. Every detail, from the floor plan to the ambient lighting to the voice notes that played between sets, was curated. “It was DIY, but deliberate. I wanted people to feel like they were stepping into a world I’d made for them, not just listening to me sing.” And they did. Some traveled across cities. Others brought letters. A few shared stories of grief, breakups, loneliness, and how her songs had met them there. “It wasn’t about me anymore,” she says. “It was about what the music made possible for them.”
Backstage, it wasn’t much different. No green rooms or buffer. She met every single person who attended, hugged them, signed notebooks, took selfies, and asked their stories. “I wanted to know who was listening. If they had taken the time to show up, the least I could do was hold space for them.”
These days, Gini spends most of her time between sessions and spreadsheets—working on new music, refining mixes, and figuring out how to navigate an industry she’s still getting the hang of. “I’ve Googled everything from ‘how to file taxes as a musician’ to ‘how royalties work in India,’” she laughs. “I’m learning as I go. I ask people. I DM artists I admire. Some of them even reply.” She talks about this part with the same groundedness she brings to songwriting—as if artistry and admin were two sides of the same page.
She’s hands-on with everything, from production to visual storytelling. She taught herself how to produce in ninth grade because she didn’t want her songs to rely on someone else’s interpretation. “I play most of the instruments in my songs. That’s the joy of it for me: translating the feeling exactly how it sounded in my head.”
When it comes to technology in music, Gini is clear-eyed, especially about artificial intelligence. “I’d rather make ten bad beats myself than one soulless, AI-generated one,” she says. “I don’t want perfection. I want fingerprints. I want music that feels human—awkward, flawed, real.” It’s a rare thing to hear a 19-year-old so defiantly in favor of the imperfect. But maybe that’s what sets her apart—she doesn’t want the illusion of meaning, she wants the mess of it.
She has a packed release calendar—at least one song a month until October, including collaborations, solo tracks, and the beginnings of what will eventually become her first album. “I’ve been working on it since last April,” she says. “I don’t know what shape it’s going to take yet. I’m not forcing it. I’m just letting it grow.”
She speaks of her art not as a product, but as a presence — something that lives beyond her. “I know I’ll cease to exist one day,” she says. “But my music won’t. And if someone finds a song I wrote years after I’m gone and it makes them feel something — then that’s enough.”
Credits:
Writer: Peony Hirwani
Photographer: Amitava Saha
Executive Editor: Shamani Joshi
Creative Director & Producer: Manmeet Sandha
Stylist: Pratyasha Sarkar
Makeup Artist: Yamini Ranade
Hairstylist: Isha Singh
Videographer: Sujoy Joseph
Set Design: Nandita Rai
Assistant producer: Kopal Agarwal
Graphic designer: Tarun Kumar Tamta
Location: Alum studios
Clothing: For the 1st look: white crochet top by Get Hooked; For the 2nd look:
Double-breasted jacket and jeans from Polite Society; For the 3rd look:
Overlayed dresses by Urvashi Kaur