Not many 20-year-olds will claim to have read entire diwans of Mirza Ghalib. Murtuza Gadiwala is among the exceptions. The 22-year-old from Mazgaon claims to be a fan of Irshad Kamil, The Goo Goo Dolls and the 18th century Urdu poet. His latest EP, Riwayat, does bear a touch of the above influences in its romantic verses.

“I forayed into music in 2019 with electronic music, but veered into scoring for short films,” Gadiwala reveals. As a mass media student from Lala Lajpatrai College, Mahalaxmi, it was not until the lockdown that he decided to shift to full-time music production.