Meet the Fashion girl - Shruti Pathak 
By Screen Weekly, February 2, 2009 - 08:37 IST
Her career came alive with her debut song Mar jaawa from Fashion - and she got a Nokia Star-Screen nomination as well. Adding Dev D to her resume, Shruti Pathak's career graph is moving slowly and steadily, which, as we all know, wins the race
She hails from Ahmedabad but came here with the express intention of becoming a playback singer. The struggle phase saw her sing for serials like Amber Dhara and Annu Ki Ho Gayi Wah Bhai Wah and a couple of tracks in the hit remix album Baby Doll. For the last three years, she has been touring with Sonu Niigaam and for the last one-and-a-half years she has also been accompanying Kunal Ganjawala. "I have just begun to tour with Vishal-Shekhar," notes the petite Gujarati lass when we meet up at a suburban restaurant.
Shruti, along with several young singers, signals the resurgence of musically-trained talents in playbackdom. "I trained for ten years with Divyank Thakurji and Sunil Borgaonkarji, who are both disciples of Ustad Dilshad Khansaab. I took some additional training also with Ajay Pohankarji," says Shruti. But while she personally feels that training is a must to have a great voice and good singing skills, she admits that in playback singing exceptions can be there. "Like Kishore Kumar," she points out.
Fashion happened as the culmination of a three-year association with Salim-Sulaiman. "Some projects did not take off, but what was gratifying was that I was the first and only choice for Mar jaawa and could not have asked for a better debut song," smiles Shruti. "It was an exceptional song that was different from the conventional, and in the lower octave."
But though nominated, she did not win. How much was she disappointed? "I wasn't, because I did not expect that I win for my first-ever song. Besides, Shilpa Rao, who is a very good singer, won," she says candidly.
And how come she wrote the song she has sung in Dev D. Is she a poetess too? "Well, I do write when I am not doing music and when the mood takes me and I am inspired," she says self-deprecatingly. "Amit Trivedi had this tune that he wanted me to work on. The tune kept going on in my head and at 3.30 in the morning, the words came to me and I wrote the lyrics that Amit liked and later Anurag also approved."
Shruti is happy that all her three songs to date have been completely different and that all have been solos. "This third song is for Karan Johar's Rensil D'Silva-directed film, also with music by Salim-Sulaiman. It even has classical shades," she explains.
Shruti's wish-list of music composers is led by M.M.Kreem, A.R.Rahman and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy in particular. "I crave to be a part of their music. They are not just successful composers, but there is so much one can learn from each of them. Rahman's songs are raag-based, but he beautifies the raag by blending it with Western music. And Dheere jalna from M.M.Kreem's Paheli is my all-time favourite." Among old-timers she regrets missing out on is a long list led by Madan Mohan, Salil Chowdhury and R.D.Burman.
But if Shruti intends to move to the top in music, she also has another ambition. "I have done my Masters in Psychology," she says. "And my dream project is to start an institute to cure mentally-ill people free of cost. I have started taking steps towards that already, but I guess that I should wait awhile so that I have the responsibility and maturity needed for such a huge project," signs off the young singer.
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