In-Conversation with Subir Malik – “We started Parikrama 35 years old as a bunch of young kids who love rock and roll and we are still those kids…”

Parikrama supported Iron Maiden across an eight-city tour, shared stages with Deep Purple and Porcupine Tree, and were the first Indian band to play Download Festival.

The Delhi rock band has spent 35 years releasing no albums, signing no label, and yet in the age of rock and roll's decline they played a three-hour set at Jadavpur University to 20,000 people, most of whom weren't alive when the band started all those years ago…

**Parikrama has remained one of India’s biggest rock bands for decades. How do you navigate that legacy at a time when rock is fading away from popularity?**

We've always been very different. We're a little crazy. The big example is that the majority of our contemporaries from the ’90s converted to indie-pop: Colonial Cousins, Lucky Ali, KK, Silk Route and more.

We were offered the same but we did things our own way. Parikrama has never been mainstream anyway.

In the ’90s till around 2012-13, there used to be a rock night at every college fest. Slowly, rock nights finished all over the country. But in the last two years, Parikrama has got invitations from over 25 colleges. I got a call from BITS Pilani to headline. This year, we played at Jadavpur University. There were 20,000 people. There were thousands and thousands of stories on social media, and people kept tagging us and sending us stories for two weeks. Contrary to a normal 90-minute set, we played for three hours.

Rock is not where it used to be in the ’90s and 2000s. It fell majorly, but world over, it's making a major comeback.

**What was it like in the early days? How did it start?**

It used to be a lot of fun in those days. There were no restrictions at universities that you had to stop at 10 o'clock.

At SRCC's fest there used to be a bonfire and it would go on till 4 or 6 in the morning. At AIIMS we had a show of six or seven hours in 1992. We used to go on stage at 12 in the night and play till sunrise. You could be playing a 20-minute song like “The End” by The Doors.

**What were you inspired by? Which bands did you want to emulate?**

Steve Harris of Iron Maiden was my inspiration to pick up the bass. On keyboards, my main inspirations were Jon Lord from Deep Purple as well as Ray Manzarek from The Doors.

The main reason we made Parikrama was because I was in my third year and was supposed to join my family business. I wanted to play the classic rock acts that I had grown up listening to – Floyd, Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, a little bit of southern rock and The Rolling Stones – and I wanted to play that music before saying goodbye to music forever.

The whole purpose of Parikrama was to play the bands that we had grown up listening to with posters on our walls.

**When was it that Parikrama blew up?**

I had played in a lot of bands before I made Parikrama. One of the things we decided was that wherever we reach we will always keep our feet on the ground because the day it reaches your head that you've become someone is the beginning of the end.

We are completing 35 years but Parikrama is not an earning source for anybody in the band.

We work ten times harder than a lot of other musicians because for other musicians – music is mainly their career. I thought about it quite a bit and realised that if we have to do rock and roll all our lives we have to ensure that our homes are running from alternate sources of income. If you are financially secure then you can rock and roll all your life.

**What were the best moments in this 35-year-old journey?**

We played thousands of shows. We toured the world. We had great times. We supported an eight-city tour with Iron Maiden. We played with Porcupine Tree, Deep Purple – what not!

Just imagine: we started Parikrama 35 years ago as a bunch of young kids who love rock and roll and we are still those kids.

We couldn't even ever think or imagine in our wildest dreams that one day I'd be sharing the stage with people whose audio cassettes I used to get. It was a legendary feeling. Bruce Dickinson (lead singer of Iron Maiden) actually called me on my birthday.

We are super blessed that we have Parikrama in our lives because otherwise I would have been sitting in Kashmiri Gate and selling motor parts.

In some colleges, over 35 years, we have played eight times, ten times. So the younger generation keeps coming in, and Parikrama is still the same, playing the same colleges…