I always ask people to forget any cliched ideas about Hindi cinema when it comes to the kind of music I make. Yes, I write scores for Bollywood, but you won't often see sexy girls gyrating to my music. The films I choose to work on, like Gangs of Wasseypur, which was a hit last year, are about heavier subjects such as revenge and drug addiction. My name on the bottom of a film poster is a kind of brand - people come to see the films I've worked on because even if they don't know my face, they know my reputation.
I spend most of my day in the studio, a soundproofed little oasis in the Mumbai suburb of Andheri West. The suburbs are where all the film studios are and that means that the street chaos of Mumbai's less central neighbourhoods is pushed up against great big high rises, surrounded by construction and swarms of cabs. The noise pollution is unbearable outside the studio, but inside there are no sounds but music. Musicians from all over India work at all hours on the melodies I write. I've been working with some folk musicians from the Punjab for a film that is coming out later this year and we jam until we can't play any longer. Then a boy comes to bring us chai, and we press on.
I never pictured doing this kind of thing as a kid. I'm 33 now and I grew up in Santacruz, another Mumbai suburb. That's where I discovered the album that made me fall in love with music: the score to the 1993 Tamil action comedy Thiruda Thiruda, by A.R. Rahman. I still play that album when I need inspiration.