of the cello is as fascinating as the instrument used for beating cotton mattresses i think my forte lies in my strong sense of cinema i really understand narrative and like to defamiliarise the familiar anything that youve listened to in the past i want to morph differentlythat sense probably stems from growing up with a famous filmmaker father buddhadeb dasgupta how did you take to musicthere were many other influences at play my mothers grandfather was rajanikanta sen bengali renaissance poet and composer and my sister and i were naturally into dance i was going to take up odishi as a career but baba introduced us to piano we did it as a chore because we werent good performers then fauzia mariker a music teacher in kolkata inspired me to study music for which i went to york university in toronto over time i realised my happy zone was in the compositional part i landed in mumbai to work assisted amit trivedi and then two marathi films shala and fandry came my way having grown up on foreign films a different language or culture didnt pose a problem instead it opened doorswere seeing women directors cinematographers editors why not more music directorsi dont understand why it has been so male dominated for generations although there shouldnt be anything holding women back there might be aspects considered easier for men like handling long and late hours though in a city like mumbai it isnt really a problem theres also this intimidation of technology but thats not imperative to producing good music i started by writing notations on paper and gradually moved to computing and programming it can easily be learnt on the job the craft has nothing to do with genderbut does it get more difficult when you belong to a minority in an industry within the industryoh yes theres definitely an inequality that you know exists but once you get into it you can change things for yourself ive never faced gender discrimination in terms of wages or work respect i was always like matangini hazra freedom fighter expressing myself if i felt something was unfair