Born in a Kashmiri family and a Global Human at heart, I was brought up in Northern India. I’ve always been a balladeer at heart. Regardless of the circumstances that I’ve done most of my writing in, I still cherish all the words that I have penned, for that’s the only reason I’m still here. This site features a glimpse at my work and hopefully you will get to see the rest in my First Book and more if you run into me on some random path of life.

Check out some of the photos from my Travels here and on Picasa and pictures of my dream meeting with Ruskin Bond and trip to Himalayas – here!

I started playing Guitar seriously around Spring of 2007. I’m self taught but I have learnt some ropes from my cousin, and have picked up some things from my friend Nikhil. I started writing back in December 2001 and have traveled some distance since then. I stepped into the world of Urdu Poetry in 2003 by a sheer stroke of coincidence mixed with divine grace. I dedicate my interest in Urdu Poetry to my late Grandfather (Nanaji), Mr. Gopinath Kaushik, who himself was a master of many languages including Urdu. Other than that Urdu Poetry runs in our family. My Grandfather (Dadaji) was himself a connoisseur of Urdu Poetry.

After years of collaborating on song-writing, composing and travelling together, Nikhil and I finally decided to convert our dream into a reality. In September of 2009, Iktara was born. After we noticed how our music and lyrics were reaching and touching the hearts of many across the world through the wonderful channel of social-websites, we realized that the time had come to officially launch ourselves in whatever humble way we can to spread the music around.
In February 2011, we finally launched our first digital release Skyas – which is our first step towards taking our music and words to the people. A preview of some of our songs may be seen at Iktara’s website. We are always working on something new and the release of our English Album “Maiden’s Story” is held up due to time-crunch issues.

Please stay tuned for more!

Om Namah Shivay
Gautam Dhar
January 2013
Delhi, India