It begins in stillness. A half-lit room, a guitar resting against a wall, and Sahil Samuel quietly humming to himself, not rehearsing, just remembering. There’s something different in his tone now. The edges are softer, but the weight hasn’t left. Over the years, the man who called himself Naalayak — the reckless one, the rebel, the restless firebrand of Indian indie rock — has learned that survival sometimes sounds like silence.

Marammat, his new album, isn’t the story of someone chasing fame or redemption. It’s the sound of someone learning how to repair. Not the neat, cinematic kind of repair, but the slow, uneven, human kind that takes place somewhere between doubt and devotion. “The first crack I had to acknowledge was within myself," he says, and you can almost hear that confession

See Full Page