2 weeks Ago By Sharan Sanil
The 22-year-old will debut a few unreleased songs at NH7 Weekender this weekend Courtesy of artist Garv Taneja aka Chaar Diwaari isn’t just another name in the Indian music landscape—he’s a provocateur and a storyteller who thrives on challenging what’s normal. At only 22, the New Delhi-based artist has cultivated a style as introspective as it is visually arresting. This year has been a turning point, not for any flashy external milestones—despite the massive success of his seven-minute odyssey via the “LOVESEXDHOKA!!!” music video—but for the inner growth, he’s prioritized in 2024.
(We love an introspective king.) For Taneja, music is an open-ended medium—an honest, first-person account meant to evoke interpretations rather than dictate them. This refusal to box his work reflects the broader evolution he’s undergone this year, unafraid to scrap projects like in favor of something truer to where he is now as an artist.
Now, as he prepares for his debut at the NH7 Weekender in Pune, Diwaari is focused on experimentation, not just with his sound but with himself. This performance marks a new chapter in his journey, one where introspection and artistry collide on a grander stage: I think this year’s work has been more internal than external. I’ve just put out, think two songs this year.
I just put out “Thehra” and “Dhoka”. I’ve taken a lot of steps to finding out , musically, visually. I was working on an EP before this and then I scrapped it.
I made five songs and then I thought, I can do better than this—I made another one. And I’m about to finish that and I think I’ll drop that in a while. Yeah, that’s what’s been going on.
I’ve been discovering a lot about myself—what I like, what I don’t like and what I’ll keep on doing. That EP was more or less autobiographical in a way. I was talking about myself, but while I was making it, I was discovering a lot of things about myself as I made it.
I felt like, this is not enough. I need more, I need more songs and I need to do justice to an autobiographical project. I need more content.
So I decided that I have a better idea for now. So I came up with a different EP and I kinda left it in the middle. Yeah, I think some of the tracks from might pop up in other projects.
While working on the EP, I had this moment of realization—I was creating something, but I wasn’t entirely the person I was portraying in it. I started to see myself evolving differently, and that gave me a clearer vision as I went along. I’ve met so many people this year—filmmakers, behind-the-scenes professionals, and even some of my favorite artists.
I think I met Indian Ocean this year too, and I love that band. But honestly, this year has been more of an internal journey for me. The outside world hasn’t influenced me much because I’ve started feeling saturated with the existing music, films, and people out there.
I’ve realized that I want to create things that push beyond my current skill level. I have ideas I’m not quite able to execute yet, but I’m working towards them. I’m focused on improving my skills so I can do justice to those ideas and bring them to life with the execution they deserve.
There are 2-3 unreleased songs I’m looking forward to playing there. Let’s see how it goes—I’ve never really done a full-on festival like this before. I think I did perform at Zero once, but NH7 is on a completely different scale, and that’s exciting.
I’m eager to experiment with myself, to try new things, and to see what resonates with the audience. For me, everything is a learning experience, and this performance is no different. I’m ready to take it all in and grow from it.
*laughs* Like, financially, physically, emotionally, it was the hardest project to make. Because I underestimated the scale of a seven-minute video. I thought that a normal music video was two to five minutes long, and it would be shot in two days.
I think it took me a month to make this video. More or less, on-ground shoots..
.so I think, I think we shot five days, but those five days were across a month because every day we shot, we realized something had gone wrong. Then something else would go wrong.
What also happened was that just before shooting, I kind of rewrote the entire script because I felt the story that we were originally going with was not cutting it. I kind of simplified it a lot and like made it a lot more linear. At the end of the day, it’s a music video.
It should work in a way where it works on the surface but also tells the story that I want to tell. So we tried to do that, but we had a lot of backlash. We had a lot of things that went wrong on the set.
Yeah man, learning experience again, everything is a learning experience. *laughs* I come to my music as a philosophy, you know? I’m behind it, but I’m not representing any thought or functioning for any ideology. I’m just doing what I feel—I have ideas, thoughts, and feelings, and I put them out into the world.
And that’s about it, man. I don’t want to say anything or make any statements. Honestly, I don’t think I’m even capable of making a statement.
The idea of making a statement feels entitled to me. People don’t need more statements—there are already enough philosophies out there. What I need more in a song is honesty.
What I need in a project is originality. I want more unique things rather than just another f***king statement. It’s all first-person based.
This is for the world to decide, to love or to hate. I’ve been watching a lot of films recently, and I really want to explore different uses of color in the future. There was this documentary I saw at the Dharamshala International Film Festival—can’t recall the name—but it had incredible fluorescent lights and a unique play of colours.
Some scenes were shot in negative and others in more experimental formats, like infrared. It reminded me of that infrared sequence in , which I loved. I f**k with that idea.
I’d also love to work with prosthetics and practical effects at some point—really get into the tactile side of filmmaking. Of course, that kind of experimentation would require a crazy budget, but we’ll get there eventually. I want to collaborate with artists who create incredibly rich music.
When I listen to their work, it makes me feel small because their music is so expansive and profound. For example, I’d love to work with Indian Ocean or someone like Amit Reddy, who is way beyond my region and leagues ahead of me musically. I’ve realized that seeing people I genuinely look up to at work fills me with a kind of joy that makes everything feel worthwhile.
It’s one of those things that gives life meaning. I’d also love to collaborate with someone like Salim Merchant. These are the artists I dream of working with.
Simply that there are definitely some people out there who are really putting in the work. There’s Dhanji’s work and also “Yati” by Nanku, and they’re great examples of artists pushing boundaries. Recently, I’ve also come across some emerging talents who are doing exciting things.
For me, originality is key. I’m drawn to sounds that feel fresh and new. With the advent of AI, I think the only edge we have left as artists is our functionality and thoughts—AI tends to throw craft and skill out the window.
That said, I feel like the scene is saturated, especially in pop and even in indie. It’s often the same trap-style music being recycled. I really want to see people create what they genuinely feel, instead of trying to emulate other artists.
For me, it’s all about a unique combination of emotions coming through in the music.” I don’t think I’m excited anymore, man. *laughs* Between the last interview and now, I’ve learned a lot more about AI and how it works, and honestly, it feels more scary than exciting.
It’s like a technological leap as monumental as fire—like we’ve invented fire all over again. There’s this notion that it could be our last major invention because once we hit Advanced General Intelligence or AGI, things will just escalate from there. I’ve seen so many AI-generated videos recently, and it’s overwhelming.
It’s a nonlinear development curve, and it’s happening way too fast. I’m not even worried about AI replacing people—it’s more the fact that we’ve essentially created life in some way. But it’s still too early to say much about where it’s all headed.
I’m planning to release a lot of music in 2025. I’ve already got a bunch of songs that are almost finished, and my focus is on putting them out there. After the EP, I want to start gearing up for an album.
True, bro. I 100 per cent agree—India isn’t an album audience. Very few artists have released albums that feel truly intentional, where the whole record is designed to flow from start to finish with purpose.
Someone like Dhanji with , or by Prabh Deep—those are the only two albums that come to mind when I think of independent artists who’ve genuinely committed to the format. A lot of big artists tend to just compile whatever songs they’ve been working on and call it an album, and while I’m not a fan of that approach, I don’t look down on it either—it’s just another way of working. Personally, I want my album to have intention behind it.
That said, I don’t want my first album to be my best. I just want to make a good album and learn from the experience. I want to at least get my hands dirty first.
That’s why I’m not talking about the name of my next project. I think they kind of jinxed it with . Because I said it too early.
And then it just kind of never happened. *laughs* You can grab your.
