Rishab Sharma on His Unlikely Journey: 'I Want to Make a Movie Inspired By My Life'

For sitar player Rishab Sharma, the story of his musical journey already reads a little like a film script. It begins not in concert halls or grand music academies, but inside his father’s shop, where the young musician spent his days surrounded by visiting maestros.

“I was just a young musician with my sitar in my dad’s store,” Sharma recalls in the League of Excellence powered by BMW India. “All these great maestros would come in and teach me a little bit.” Each encounter left behind a small lesson—a phrase, a rhythm, a musical idea. “I was like this musical piggy bank for them,” he says. “One raga here, one taal there, one sargam here.”

Those early, informal exchanges would quietly shape the musician he would become. Instead of a single rigid lineage, Sharma’s understanding of classical music grew through fragments of guidance from many different artists.

The experience also left him with a sense that his life, shaped by these chance encounters, carries a narrative worth telling.

“I do want to make a movie inspired by my life,” he says. It’s not an immediate plan, but a long-term goal. “Eventually, when I have more significance to my story.”

For now, Sharma is still in the middle of living it. The musician admits that the scale of his journey has often exceeded his own expectations. “I stopped dreaming after a while. Because even when you dream, you fall short of what the universe has to offer you.” The statement is less about giving up on ambition and more about remaining open to possibility—allowing life to unfold in ways that cannot always be planned, he says.

The sitar continues to be Sharma’s way of connecting with audiences across cultures and spaces, from traditional stages to new digital platforms. His ultimate ambition, he says, is simple. “I want to play the sitar for each and every soul on this planet.”