A singer-songwriter, Vineet Manhas’ struggles with music define the intensity of his passion towards it. It is in the very beginning that he lets me know the kind of relationship he has had with music. It has been equal parts challenging, frustrating, depressing, and motivating for him, he says. And it is when he begins talking about his experiences, his all-consuming love for creating music is revealed. Singing, writing, and playing instruments, Manhas lives for and through music.
Coming from a small village in the Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir, Vineet had no experience of singing or playing instruments. While a big fan of Jagjit Singh’s ghazals, he had so far only hummed along their tunes–– something he now comes to realise was his natural instinct towards good old songs and lyrics of depth. It was at his freshers party in college, as if in a stroke of serendipity, that he volunteered to sing. There, watching a guy play his guitar, he quickly became fond of the instrument. He recalls that before he could afford buying the instrument, he bought a book worth sixty bucks on how to play a guitar. After six to seven months of studying it was when he was able to buy the instrument. That’s when his spree with music began.
However, his ride with his instruments and songs has been a little rough to say the least. With the responsibilities of his family on his shoulders, Vineet has not been able to give time to it as much as he would have liked to. Working in an IT organisation, through the last ten years he has only been able to work on his music side by side. Creating melodies and tunes, writing over a hundred songs, and working on some local projects, these years for him came riddled with a lot of ups and downs. The downs had been such that he gave up on music completely for long spans of time, even going as far ahead to sell all his instruments, save for his guitar.
Just like that, he had stopped doing music for a while when he came back to his home in Jammu due to the implications of Covid. With reading a few books on life and finding inspiration in other artists’ work he was faced with a new found motivation. While some self-help books had their part to play, it was majorly music-artist Bharat Chauhan and his songs that made Vineet get back to working on his music. Vineet confesses he always thought nobody would be interested in listening to the kind of songs he wrote. But the realisation of the shift in Indian music scene dawning on him as he listened to new indie artists, made him believe in himself and helped him push forward.
It was then that he decided to release his songs. He picked out a few from the scores of lyrics he had written, composed and produced and put them together for his first album, ‘Tamam’. He did it all with the means of limited resources he had, a project he thought he could never accomplish. Safe to say, it has been a very fulfilling experience for Vineet. Aside from this, he has also done three songs for a web-series soon to be released on Amazon Prime. Currently, he is also planning and working on his new EP, along with working 10-hours a day at his job.
Vineet admits it has been challenging, knowing that he cannot leave his job which supports not just his family but also his music. It’s a tough puzzle, he says, but I have to keep on doing it. And until he can make music his full-time profession like he dreams of, he has decided to devote his time to learning new things and working on his music as much as he can. “I have started to understand and accept that it is going to be a tough and challenging journey but somehow I’m trying to stick to it”, he says.
When it comes to the part music has played in his life, Vineet professes that it keeps him on track. With music, he now recognises his voice more as an individual. It makes him take care of himself, adopt habits that are healthy, and has become a source of mental peace. When I ask him what is his favourite part of being a musician even with all its difficulties, he surprises me by saying that it helps him in appreciating life and showing gratitude for it.
To make a point of this thought he quotes a lyric from a song in his upcoming EP. It goes, “Zindagi mein badi khushiyon ko nahi, choti choti khushiyon mai zindagi dhund lo”. Music has taught him that lesson. And so we come to the lessons of advice that he would like to give to people stuck in a path just as him. He begins by saying how important it is to differentiate between hobby and passion. It’s only then that you can push your creativity.
Resonating with his own life, he says if you are passionate about it, you should give your everything to it. Vineet admits of his regret of wasting a number of years before, thinking that in the future there’d be fewer struggles and then he could begin working on his music. He says it was a mistake to think that then. The struggles are just the same, only now he knows that no matter what, he cannot give up on his passion. Fighting through his own challenges, he believes we do find their worth someday. “There will be a time when the success you hope and wish for would come to you”, he adds on a hopeful note. And with his talent and tenacity, that success is sure to come Vineet’s way.
