Exclusive: 'Ranveer Singh-Aditya Dhar Deserve National Awards For Dhurandhar': Composer Shashwat Sachdev

Dhurandhar composer Shashwat Sachdev has steadily built a reputation for crafting immersive musical worlds, from scoring ambitious Indian films to becoming the first Indian co-composer to work alongside Hans Zimmer and James Everingham on Virdee.

In an exclusive conversation with NDTV's Hardika Gupta, the composer spoke about collaborating with Hans Zimmer's team, his creative partnership with Aditya Dhar on Dhurandhar, working with Arijit Singh on Naina Bhare, why he believes Ranveer Singh and Aditya Dhar have delivered National Award-worthy work, and the future of original film music and background scores in Indian cinema.

'People Are Listening To Indian Composers As Storytellers Now'

Speaking about the evolving landscape of Indian film music, Shashwat Sachdev said global audiences are now paying greater attention to background scores and sound design.

"I think the world has always had curiosity for Indian music, but sometimes it was a slightly touristic curiosity: tabla, sitar, colour, exotic energy. What is changing now is that people are listening to Indian composers as storytellers, not just suppliers of flavour. That is an important shift," he said.

According to him, Bollywood has always produced imaginative scores, but they haven't always received the same appreciation as film songs.

"Songs became the public memory of a film. Scores lived in its bones. Now, because of streaming, global technicians, OTT storytelling and a more exposed audience, people have become more aware of sound design, themes and background scores," he added.

However, Sachdev believes appreciation alone isn't enough.

"But attention is not the same as respect. We still have to earn respect through craft, through restraint, through originality. We cannot keep saying Indian emotion is big, so the music must always be big. Sometimes the legacy of a scene is one note placed at the right time," he said.

Expressing optimism about the future, he added, "If we stop trying to imitate the West, and also stop treating our own tradition like museum furniture, we can create a sound language that is genuinely ours and still globally fluent."

On Becoming The First Indian Co-Composer To Work With Hans Zimmer's Team

Reflecting on collaborating with Hans Zimmer's ecosystem and James Everingham for Virdee, Sachdev said he wanted to contribute as a composer with his own voice rather than simply adding an "Indian layer" to the music.

"It came about quite organically, and in a way, through the music itself. With projects like these, people are not looking only for a composer who can write a tune. They are looking for a sensibility," he said.

Explaining the brief for Virdee, he added, "It needed a sound that understood cultural memory but was not trapped by cultural cliches. It had to carry identity, violence, grief, faith, family - all without turning the music into a postcard."

When the opportunity came along, Sachdev said he knew exactly what he wanted to bring to the collaboration.

"I did not want to enter as the Indian composer who adds the ethnic layer. That has happened too often to artists from our part of the world. I wanted to enter as a composer with a point of view," he said.

Describing the experience, he added, "It was not an ornamental collaboration. It was a serious musical conversation. James has a very strong dramatic instinct, and Hans's ecosystem has this discipline of building worlds from sound. Every texture is questioned: why is it here, what does it do, does it belong?"

"For me, the honour was not just the association with big names. The honour was that the work demanded honesty. In that space, your nationality becomes one part of your vocabulary, not the entire sentence. That is how it should be."

'Every Sound Must Have A Job': Lessons From Hans Zimmer's Ecosystem

The composer said the biggest lesson he learned from working with Hans Zimmer's team wasn't about scale, but about discipline and clarity.

"People assume that working with a name like Hans means you learn about a big sound. Of course, you do, but the real lesson is clarity," he said.

Describing the team's working style, Sachdev added, "Every sound must have a job. You cannot hide behind cleverness. If a cue is emotionally false, everyone can feel it. If a texture is beautiful but it is not serving the story, it has to go."

He believes Indian cinema could benefit from adopting a similar approach.

"In India, we are very gifted emotionally. We can feel a scene instantly. Our musicians are unbelievably intuitive. But sometimes our process becomes chaotic, and chaos gets mistaken for passion. We need to protect the madness, but organise it better. Background score cannot be a last-minute rescue operation. It has to be part of the film's architecture," he said.

Calling for composers to be involved much earlier in filmmaking, Sachdev added, "What I want to bring back is the idea of a sound-world being built from day one. Not, let us add music after the edit, but what is the sonic soul of this film? That requires directors, producers, editors and composers to speak early."

"The great scores we remember are not loud because they have more instruments. They are loud in memory because they were inevitable," he said.

How The Musical World Of Dhurandhar Came To Life

Recalling the first time Aditya Dhar narrated Dhurandhar, Sachdev said he immediately sensed that the film was much more than an action spectacle.

"When Aditya first narrated Dhurandhar, I remember feeling that this was not just a story about action or patriotism or power. There was a kind of buried sadness in it. A wound under the spectacle," he recalled.

That emotional undercurrent shaped his musical approach.

"My first instinct was that the music could not be heroic in a simple way. It had to feel earned, scarred, almost ancestral," he said.

Explaining the sonic palette he envisioned, Sachdev added, "I was thinking of metal and breath, earth and electronics, folk memory and something industrial. Not fusion for the sake of fusion, but because the world of Dhurandhar felt like India moving between myth and machinery."

He also said composing for a duology presented a unique challenge.

"You cannot compose only for the immediate moment. You are planting seeds that may bloom much later. A theme can appear with innocence in one film and return with terrible knowledge in another. That was exciting to me. It allowed the music to age with the characters," he said.

Summing up his philosophy behind the score, Sachdev concluded, "Do not make the audience admire the music. Make them feel the destiny of these people. The best compliment for a score is when, years later, a piece of music brings back the moral temperature of the film."

Working With Aditya Dhar: 'We Talk About The Character Before The Music'

Describing his creative partnership with Aditya Dhar, Shashwat Sachdev said their conversations begin with characters and emotions long before they discuss melodies or rhythms.

"Aditya is very precise, yes, but not in a mechanical way. He is precise because he cares about truth. He will question a note if it feels like it is performing rather than living inside the scene," he said.

Sachdev admitted that while the process can be demanding, it is one he enjoys.

"I would rather be pushed by someone who knows what he is chasing than praised politely by someone who is unclear," he added.

According to the composer, their discussions usually revolve around the emotional world of the film before any music is written.

"We talk a lot before we talk technically. We talk about the character, the mythology of the world, what cannot be said, what the audience should not be spoon-fed. Then I go away and try to find a musical answer. Sometimes the answer is a melody, sometimes a rhythm, sometimes silence," he said.

He also revealed that disagreements are an important part of their creative process.

"Behind the scenes, there is a lot of trust, but also a lot of argument in the healthy sense. You cannot make memorable work by being agreeable all the time. Aditya has a sharp instinct for detail, and I have my own stubbornness about sound, so the meeting point becomes interesting," he shared.

Summing up what makes the collaboration special, Sachdev said, "What I value most is that he allows music to have character. In some films, score is treated like emotional wallpaper. With him, music is part of the storytelling muscle. That gives a composer freedom, but also no place to hide. If it is not true, it will show."

On National Awards Buzz Surrounding Dhurandhar

With many already calling Dhurandhar a potential National Award contender, Sachdev chose not to speculate on the outcome, insisting that the work should remain the focus.

"I feel the right way to answer this is to keep it about the work and not turn it into a prediction. The National Awards have their own dignity, and those decisions belong to the jury, the audience, and honestly, to time," he said.

According to him, being closely associated with a project makes it difficult to judge it objectively.

"When you are inside a project, you are too close to it. You remember the drafts, the doubts, the sleeplessness, the arguments, the little breakthroughs. You are not judging it from a distance," he explained.

However, he believes the team poured everything into the film.

"What I can say, very honestly, is that Dhurandhar was made with immense seriousness. Every department came in with a kind of hunger and dignity. Nobody was casual about it. There was scale, yes, but there was also intent," he said.

Sachdev also believes that conversations around awards indicate that a film has resonated with audiences beyond its theatrical run.

"When people start speaking about a film in the context of national recognition, it means the work has travelled beyond the immediate Friday noise. That itself is a beautiful thing," he added.

For him, however, the priority remains serving the story.

"My job is much simpler, and also much harder: to serve the film truthfully. To write music that carries the emotional memory of the story without asking for attention all the time. Awards are a blessing when they happen, but they cannot be the reason you make the work. The work has to be honest even when nobody is watching, because eventually that honesty is what remains."

'Ranveer Brought Weight, Vulnerability And Danger Together'

Asked whether he believes Dhurandhar director Aditya Dhar and actor Ranveer Singh have delivered National Award-worthy work, Sachdev answered in the affirmative.

"Yes, I do. And I say that carefully, not as a headline. Award-worthy work is not just work that is impressive. It is work that leaves a mark because someone has gone beyond competence," he said.

Speaking about Aditya Dhar, Sachdev praised the filmmaker's understanding of storytelling.

"With Aditya, what people often see is scale, tension, impact. But what I see closely is the engineering underneath the emotion. He knows the grammar of a scene. He knows when to withhold, when to strike, when to let the audience arrive by themselves," he said.

He added, "Direction is not only about controlling a set. It is about holding the moral and emotional compass of the film. Aditya does that with unusual conviction."

Turning to Ranveer Singh, Sachdev said it was the actor's restraint that impressed him the most.

"With Ranveer, the remarkable thing is surrender. He has enormous energy, we all know that. But in Dhurandhar, what mattered to me was not the energy alone; it was the control of it," he said.

"The best performances are not always the loudest ones. Sometimes the legend of a performance is in what the actor refuses to over-explain. Ranveer brought weight, vulnerability and danger together, which is not easy," he added.

While reiterating that awards are decided elsewhere, Sachdev maintained that the team's effort deserves recognition.

"As someone who watched the process closely, I can say the work had the seriousness and risk that deserve recognition. It was not casual work. It was work done with skin in the game."

Working With Arijit Singh On Naina Bhare

Speaking about collaborating with Arijit Singh during a period when conversations around the singer's future dominated headlines, Sachdev said none of that ever entered the recording studio.

"Honestly, all that noise around his future never entered the room for me. Arijit is Arijit. You do not go to a voice like that because of headlines, and you do not stop going because of headlines. You go because the song has asked for that soul," he said.

Explaining why Arijit was the perfect choice for Naina Bhare, the composer said the song demanded emotional restraint.

"Naina Bhare needed a very particular emotional temperature. It could not be sung as a display of sadness. It needed restraint, dignity, almost the feeling of someone holding back tears because the memory is too private. Arijit understands that space instinctively," he said.

According to Sachdev, the singer's attention to detail stood out during the recording.

"He does not just ask, what is the note? He asks, in his own way, where is this person standing emotionally?" he said.

The collaboration, he added, unfolded naturally.

"Once he heard the song and understood the world it belonged to, there was no unnecessary drama around it. During the recording, what stayed with me was his economy. He does not need to give speeches about emotion. He will sing a line, then maybe change one breath, one tiny bend, one hesitation, and suddenly the whole meaning shifts," he recalled.

Summing up what makes Arijit special, Sachdev said, "That is the difference between a singer and an artist. A singer can deliver a tune. An artist can make you feel the life before and after the tune. With Arijit, you feel that. The conversation outside may keep changing, but a voice that has entered people's grief, love and memory at that scale does not disappear because of a news cycle. It becomes part of the times."The final part will cover the remaining two sections:

'The Algorithm Has Made The Shortcut More Efficient'

Sharing his thoughts on recreations, algorithms and the future of Bollywood music, Shashwat Sachdev said originality requires courage not just from composers but from the entire filmmaking ecosystem.

"I think the dependence is definitely there, but I do not want to be moralistic about it. Every era has its shortcuts. Earlier also, there were formulas, borrowed sounds and safe choices. Today the algorithm has just made the shortcut more efficient," he said.

However, he believes recreations are not the problem in themselves.

"The danger is not recreation itself. A reinterpretation can be beautiful if there is a reason. The danger is when we start treating memory as inventory. We take an old song not because the story needs it, but because the market recognises it. That is when music becomes a marketing department with a chorus," he explained.

According to Sachdev, creating original music requires confidence from everyone involved in filmmaking, not just composers.

"A composer can write something new, but if the ecosystem is nervous, the song will be pushed toward the familiar. Producers want safety, platforms want skip-proof hooks, labels want instant recall. I understand the pressure. Money is involved. But art cannot be built only on fear," he said.

Despite the industry's growing reliance on formulas, the composer remains optimistic about the future.

"I am actually optimistic. The audience is not as shallow as we sometimes assume. When something original is honest and emotionally direct, people respond," he said.

"The future will belong to composers and filmmakers who can create new memory. That is the real business. Not just reminding people of what they already loved, but giving them something they did not know they were waiting for," he added.

Why Background Scores Deserve More Respect In Indian Cinema

The composer believes background scores are finally receiving greater appreciation from audiences, but says they continue to be undervalued during the filmmaking process.

"Historically, background scores in India have been under-discussed compared to songs. Songs had radio, albums, videos, fan culture. Scores were inside the film, doing invisible work. When they did their job perfectly, people often did not even notice," he said.

Calling it the "strange fate" of background music, Sachdev added, "If it fails, everyone feels it; if it succeeds, the scene gets the credit."

He acknowledged that things have begun to change over the years.

"Viewers now talk about themes, sonic worlds, motifs. They remember a character's sound. They notice when silence is used well. That is encouraging," he said.

However, he believes the biggest challenge lies in how background scores are treated while a film is being made.

"The bigger issue is not appreciation after release; it is respect during the making. A background score needs time. It needs conversation. It needs access to the film's inner life. If you bring the composer too late and expect magic in panic, you may still get good music because Indian composers are survivors, but you may not get great cinema," he said.

For Sachdev, songs and background scores complement rather than compete with each other.

"For me, songs and scores are not enemies. Songs are the public face of memory; score is often the private architecture. One is sung outside the theatre, the other haunts you after you leave. Indian cinema needs both," he said.

He concluded by stressing that giving background scores greater importance will only strengthen Indian cinema.

"If we treat background score with more seriousness, we will not become less Indian; we will become more cinematic. The legacy of our films will deepen."