what started off as a collaboration for their school reunion this musical duo pianist anil srinivasan and carnatic vocalist sikkil gurucharan have completed 15 years of their musical journey as collaborators in a freewheeling chat with us they talk about how their collaboration evolved how they find a middle ground when there are creative differences why they feel they would have had a difficult time had they launched their music now and more back then this was a novel idea a collaboration between a pianist and a carnatic singer but were there any apprehensions gurucharan when i heard us the first time at the music academy through the sound system they had just installed i was convinced this was going to be liked by people it blew my mind i knew this was eventually going to be recognised as a new sound of music now weve travelled 16 years down that path and people still like it yes there were people who raised concerns about me going into a different territory that was more out of concern that i would pay more attention to this form of music and sacrifice the other one but i have never seen it as two different forms ive never changed my style of singing thanks to anil he never asked me to change my style of singing he never told me to sing aasai mugam in a different way he just told me to sing aasai mugam and he brought in his own layers to ithow do you think this collaboration has evolved over the yearsanil it has evolved tremendously also weve grown into different people because of this collaboration i think ive had the privilege of seeing charan becoming a world musician because of this collaboration it opened him to ideas of sound he may not have thought of otherwise brought him in touch with his other collaborators and so on for me ive gotten to love carnatic music more because of him it has become an obsession because of charan it has also made piano a permanent fixture not just with charan but with several other collaborators people have also learnt to accept the instrument because of this i think weve grown up with each other through this collaboration were still evolving and learningwhere is this collaboration heading togurucharan i think this collaboration has come this far because weve never had any agenda also it is important that we acknowledge other artistes whove collaborated with us like dancers and other world musicians so each collaboration has opened a new repertoire for us and would inspire us to keep going anil has been in the field of education for many years i have just joined his foundation we are working on a curriculum and it is a new experience for me as i have never considered myself to be someone who could convey well through words as much as i do with music anil how learning carnatic music can help