Kushal Gopalka likes calling himself a musicologist, but there’s more to his passion than just the study of music.

Text: Devyani Jayakar
Photographs: Kunal Kampani

I like to refer to myself as a musicologist,” says 42-year-old Kushal Gopalka. When I look up the definition of musicology on Dictionary.com, it says: ‘The historical and scientific study of music’. But what Kushal does encompasses that and much more. “I make people’s lives colourful,” he adds. And in more ways than one, apparently. Kushal is a part of a staid, conformist family business which manufactures dyes and colour chemicals for the textile and paper industry, known as National Dyechem Industries.

Kushal studied at Hindi Vidya Bhavan, which was “just round the corner” from where he lives. “My grandfather had been the Managing Trustee of the school, so it was inconceivable to him that I could study anywhere else. This, in spite of strong opposition from my mother, who was from a convent school background herself, and equated dissimilar schools with a ‘pathshala’.”

“My school teacher, Ms Mullan, made me realise that I love music, and am good at it. So my training in semi-classical music took on a formal structure, which would otherwise have been lacking. Later on, my uncle Ajay Piramal, who often organised mehfils in his home, was effusive in his praise. ‘You’re fabulous! You should take this up professionally,’ he would say to me repeatedly.” To cope with stage fright, which is every performer’s nightmare, Kushal opted for the opening piece every time he sang with others.