I met Dot. (Aditi) and her manager, Madhusudan, on a cold, winter Saturday night on Zoom. This was a conversation I was eagerly anticipating- somewhat of a fangirl moment. Light, fun, but not frivolous – a rare feat – Dot.’s songs take you through life’s highs, lows, depths, breadths and mundane nothingness, in a whimsical, uplifting lilt. Playing one of her songs with set expectations is to do a disservice to what she has to offer. Because her creativity is not a way to cater to people’s expectations – it is a vehicle for her imagination to expand, contract, and dance on its head as she explores the next thing that has caught her attention. Along the way, she has stumbled, fallen, grown and become Dot., and Aditi. In navigating the chaos of creativity, “there’s no north star other than my gut. I try to listen to what my gut is telling me and often, that means sidestepping what other people have to say about my music. Gut is… it’s just your body telling you stuff. You already know more than you think you know and in a way, that’s curiosity because you want to confirm.” It’s her superpower and she knows it.
Much like her songs, Dot. catches me by surprise. Debuting in The Archies catapulted her into the glitz and glam of Bollywood and everything that comes with the territory (i.e. grand movie premiere glittered with stars, ball gowns that spell g-r-a-n-d-e-u-r, and endless press coverage). Given the sequence of events, I wasn’t quite sure who I was about to meet when it said ‘Aditi has entered your waiting room’. But Dot. was a breath of fresh air. Astoundingly level-headed, feet firmly on the ground, and relatable as ever, she is a star but not for the reasons one might think. In a 2017 interview with Scroll, Dot. said, “I won’t ever stop myself from doing something just because it doesn’t conform to some musician’s ideal path.” Seven years later, she certainly hasn’t. For a celebrated musician coming off the heels of a grand Bollywood debut, one wouldn’t exactly think of her as someone in the thick of completing a Master’s dissertation in education whilst simultaneously jet setting from city to city – working on her next album, ad work, and endless shoots. But that’s Aditi – gentle but sharp, matter of fact, unrebelliously rebellious, and a follower of her heart.
When Dot. emerged in the public domain some seven odd years ago, she was still a teenager. By her second upload, ‘Everybody Dances to Techno’ (garnering 550k+ views) – a permanent resident in her live sets– she was a YouTube sensation. One of the comments in her first upload, ‘Reassure Me’ reads: “you remind me so much of Regina Spektor!” Well that’s no surprise! Looking back on the 2010s when she marinated in listening, Spektor’s name comes up quickly. “I’m called dotandthesyllables on Instagram because I like when people play with syllabic stresses. That’s why I love Fiona Apple, and I love KT Tunstall – because they play with that when they write. And Regina Spektor, especially.” Her ears, moulded by years of listening to the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Bonnie Rait, and Peggy Lee, have absorbed the wisdom of the greats; and after simmering quietly within her, they have come pouring out in her songs – a delicate air of nostalgia – a key marker of her artistry. “These are the names that keep coming up because I loved them growing up. When I was really young, it was what set me and my friends apart from the rest of the people. We always thought we were better than them because we had better music taste.” Relatable.
Since her earliest uploads on YouTube – her years of sonic infancy– Dot. has crafted an impressive and varied discography. So, where did this initial urge to share music come from? I ask her. “I think honestly, probably for some very shallow reason. I just wanted people to hear it, like it, and approve of me. Wanting to be liked… That’s probably how it started and I wonder if it’s any different now… I guess I discovered that this is something that I am good at, so just wanting to show off. But also, it’s sharing. It’s the equivalent of when you’re a kid, you make a drawing and show your parents like, ‘look mum I made this thing!’ It’s that.” Validation and approval came in plenty when Khamotion (2021), Dot.’s debut album, arrived to widespread critical acclaim– her lyric writing being the star of a show filled with a musical theatre-esque flare. At the time of release, the fresh offering was a risky and courageous take-off from the raw and waltzing sound synonymous with Dot.. Reflecting on the process of putting the album together, she very quickly dispels fantastical notions of music-making. “While doing Khamotion, everyday I felt a little differently about the album. When we were in the mixing stage, it just felt all wrong one day and I was in tears, the next day I was exuberant… There’s always a big heaviness to everything I think. It’s never smooth.”
In 2024, many more music releases and a feature film debut later, she can look back on the album free from the burdens and pressures of being a debutant. “There may have been a lot of things I would have changed but I didn’t have the means to do it then so it’s fine. I let it go. The album was co-produced by me and James Gair who is a rock lover so the guitar became heavily featured which I didn’t imagine it to be initially. And now I realise that I wanna see what it is to go away from an electric guitar and maybe towards a set of congas. What does that do? I want to see how my music functions in different contexts.” The YouTube experience – a boon in ways more than one – gifted Aditi with necessary perspective, and acceptance of the chaos, frustrations, and anxieties in the life of an artist. Wisdom that anchors her in the often choppy oceans of risk-taking, music-making, and discovery. “I realised that I’ll never be happy with a take and those are all one take songs so there are a lot of mistakes. I think it’s about looking at every project as a part of your career rather than it’s the be all and end all. Everything informs the next step.”
Artists and their trysts with insecurity are well-known. In today’s world of instant-everything and social-media-amplified inadequacies, it is only more potent. But in Aditi, I sense a rare breeze of security. She seems, to me, to be atypically comfortable in her awareness of her strengths and weaknesses. “It took me a while to realise that maybe a lot of the stuff that I was feeling inadequate about was the stuff the guys around me were good at it. Studio talk is such a thing and technical talk is such a thing that you often feel left out. The stuff that I don’t have knowledge over, I want to be introduced to in a very gentle way without putting all the pressure on myself. I’m trying to learn by doing and that means relying on other people. Now I can say that I don’t have the skillset so let’s find someone who does. Let’s see what they can make, trust them and rely on them.” For the next album, Sea Creature on the Sofa, her trusted companion and producer is Aria Nanji. “It is important to me that she is a woman, she is a studio technician, has similar music taste to me and she values acoustic treatment – the idea of doing everything as naturally as possible.” In some ways, this next offering could be termed a homecoming. “I’m pivoting back and it’s going to be closer to my original sound. It’s going to be a little bit of Americana, and the inspiration comes from the older artists I like from a different time period. This album is me trying to be a little more cohesive a project.”
Being a professional artist demands a whole heap more than having command and comfort in the musical notes or memorising lines. Aditi wholeheartedly credits her Mum, Shena Gamat, for keeping her afloat through it all. When asked about Gamat’s impact on her journey, she exclaims, “pretty much everything is her!” Aditi’s overwhelming love and gratitude is audible as she speaks at length about her mother. “She is just a really great woman and an artist in her own right. She knows what it is to trust your gut. She is a great sounding board because sometimes I will say things and she will say it back, and that’s enough to be confident in it. She knows how to talk about emotions – whether that’s my own emotions or all the trials that come with being an artist– she is good at walking you through that. She gets subtlety and she knows what questions to ask. My hope for all music students is for them to find somebody who can do that for them because that is a very useful thing. She doesn’t know anything about harmony or rhythm but she knows feel.”
I couldn’t let her go without dipping into her experience on The Archies. Afterall, she did make her acting debut in a Zoya Akhtar film, sharing lyric writing and compositional credits with household names – Javed Akhtar, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, and Ankur Tewari. On set, no two days were the same. “It was intense on some days, really fun on some days, it was very fulfilling some days, it was just cripplingly exhausting some days. It was a very high stakes project so it required a lot of grit.” By the time the movie was out in the world, life had changed, yet again. “It was expected and I thought that this was going to propel my music into something a lot more serious. The biggest thing it gave me is the ability to fund any project. Art happens in a finite space with finite resources, and it’s hard being an artist and it’s hard to earn money. So I’ve grown to respect money also. You can’t make music without money. You just have to, have to have it. It’s also creatively flexing, right? Because the acting side of things is interesting to me! I’m lucky I got both!”