Delhiwale: Confessions of a Piano Man

An accomplished pianist, the enterprising Arjun Sagar Gupta, 35, is best known for giving the National Capital Region new opportunities to experience live jazz. He opened his first music venue, the Piano Man Jazz Club, in Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave in 2015, and the second the previous year in Gurugram’s Sector 15.

His bedroom’s Yamaha Electone is clamouring for attention, even on Zoom. The statelier Steinway is in the drawing room, out of sight. An accomplished pianist, the enterprising Arjun Sagar Gupta, 35, is best known for giving the National Capital Region new opportunities to experience live jazz. He opened his first music venue, the Piano Man Jazz Club, in Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave in 2015, and the second the previous year in Gurugram’s Sector 15. They both stayed shut in the coronavirus-triggered lockdown and reopened in September.

“I spent a bulk of my time in the lockdown practising a new instrument, trumpet, and interviewing and live-streaming musicians from all over the world,” he says, chatting from his home in Vasant Vihar.

“I spent a bulk of my time in the lockdown practising a new instrument, trumpet, and interviewing and live-streaming musicians from all over the world,” he says, chatting from his home in Vasant Vihar. He gamely agreed to become a part of the Proust Questionnaire series, in which folks from diverse backgrounds are nudged to make “Parisian parlour confessions” so as to explore the lives, thoughts, values and experiences of fellow citizens.

Your main fault

Default mode – Blind trust, it’s bitten me a few times. Impatience, a bit too quick to get excited / upset.

Your idea of happiness

Hot chocolate fudge and a good movie with my partner and knowing that I did something useful today.

Your favourite colour and flower

Black, and Tuberoses. I’ve grown up with their scent in my house, dad used to get them every Sunday from the flower mandi that used to be set up in CP (Connaught Place).

Your favourite composers

Chopin, Liszt, Bill Evan, Oscar Peterson, Jobim… this is a really long list.

Your favourite poets

I enjoy reading the rather beautiful though rare poetry written by my father’s brothers.

Your heroes/heroines in real life

My piano teacher, John Raphael, who passed a few years ago, my folks, my brother… might sound silly, but I know them better than I know anyone else, and I’m grateful to be able to call them family.

What characters in history do you most dislike?

Sigh, the worst of them are alive today. The audacity and appetite of evil grows with every generation, just gets worse, implemented by people with more powerful tools at their disposal.

The military event you admire the most

None that I can think of, when do we get a borderless world?

The reform you admire the most

The reform that will eliminate religion.

How do you wish to die?

Good food, good sex, no pain and with the knowledge that the institutions I’m trying to build will live on.

Your motto in life

Growing up I used to say avoid excessive avoidance of excesses. But looking at the world today, I think we have enough excess. So now, it’s “Be kind, you don’t know what the person in front of you is going through.”