Jonita Gandhi's Journey From Playback to Popstar: From 'Chellamma' and 'What Jhumka?' to 'Beparwai'

Jonita Gandhi has always existed in the in-between. Now, a decade into a music career carved through sheer tenacity, she sings like someone who belongs everywhere and nowhere at once.

The monsoon had washed out a scheduled meeting in Mumbai. With roads flooded and power flickering across the city, plans were rerouted to a phone call. On the other end of the line, Gandhi sat near a cracked-open window, refusing to turn on the air conditioning. The breeze, she said, was enough.

“You know what’s funny? When I first moved here, I didn’t have an AC in my room. I lived like that for two and a half years,” she says with a tone of disbelief. “Now I think about it and I’m like — how did I survive?” In 2012, Gandhi arrived in Mumbai from Mississauga, Ontario, a quiet suburb of Toronto. She had a liminal voice, a handful of YouTube covers, and just enough faith to believe the city would make room for her.

Jonita Gandhi

Mumbai, then, was more myth than city: a place of longing, and warnings.

One such warning came in the form of Urmila aunty, her landlady in the Oshiwara neighbourhood — a diabetic woman who watched news channels with the fervour of a retired spy. “She was protective,” Gandhi says. “But very cynical.”

Slipping into imitation, she mimics, voice rising to a familiar pitch, “Why would you come here from Canada? You have everything there! You should find a nice doctor in America and settle down!” Then, more gently: “It was hard hearing that. But somehow, I found it funny. I think a part of me just wanted to prove her wrong.”

From One Accent to Another

Born in Delhi and raised in Toronto, Gandhi grew up bilingual, bicultural, and occasionally bifurcated. “There are still people who hear me sing and then get confused when I talk,” she says. “I’m always somewhere in the middle. Here, I’ll never feel fully Indian. And in Canada, I’ll never feel fully Canadian.”

Her parents filled the house with Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, and Kishore Kumar — the classics of old Bombay. “That’s what happens when Indians move abroad,” she says. “They overcompensate. You’re raising your kids far away, so you try to recreate India in the suburbs.” But outside those suburban living rooms, the soundscape was pure American pop of the early 2000s: Mariah Carey, Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears, Alicia Keys. “I was obsessed with the triple threats — Beyoncé, Britney, Christina Aguilera,” she says.

“That whole era.”

She’s aware of how easily she shifts between those worlds. “It’s like when Priyanka Chopra Jonas says that her accent changes depending on who she’s talking to. It just happens naturally.”

The instincts helped, but the duality never entirely dissolved. Even after over a decade in India, she still gets categorised as an outsider.

“Do I feel like an outsider? Still? Yeah,” she says. “Some days, not as much. But most days, quite a lot.”

Jonita Gandhi

Between Trust and Tact

In the early days, she was still learning how to read the fine print of the industry. “There were a few composers,” she says, cautiously. “I don’t want to name names, but they’d reach out, seem professional ... until I mentioned I was with my mum. Then suddenly they’d disappear. Like, ‘Oh, you’re not alone? Never mind.’”

“There’s this stereotype — that girls from abroad are more open, easier to take advantage of. That we’re naive.” She sighs. “Let’s just say I developed a radar.”

Touring with Sonu Nigam before moving helped. So did A. R. Rahman discovering her covers online and offering her a chance. “It gave me some credibility — like I wasn’t just a girl off YouTube.” Still, she faced the usual rookie trials: getting scammed by rickshaw drivers, overpaying fares, and worrying that kindness would be mistaken for weakness.

“I didn’t have the courage or the temperament to fight. I’d just pay. Then stew in my own embarrassment.”

But Gandhi found her footing. Her discography is a map of modern Indian pop culture: electric, multilingual, and emotionally exact. Her voice slicing clean through the chaos of “The Breakup Song” (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil), taunting through “What Jhumka?” (Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani). She’s also the one who crooned over cityscapes in “Mental Manadhil” (O Kadhal Kanmani) and swayed through the synthy pleasure of “Chellamma” (Doctor). There’s no single musical identity here, only the skill of inhabiting different ones.

She’s also found her people. “Bombay’s a melting pot. Most people here aren’t from here. That unifies us. We’re all outsiders, which weirdly makes us insiders.”

In an industry built on impressions, Gandhi has made hers stick — not by assimilation, but by accumulation. She didn’t trade in her accent or localise her western riffs. “I think I’ve just been me,” she says. There’s a kind of poise Gandhi brings to this discomfort. When she’s on stage, you don’t hear the years of code-switching, of tightrope-walking between cultures.

You only hear something steadier: the hard work, the riyaz. When she moves with buttery ease, you see the girl who took a chance, who made it past cynics. Who refuses to fold herself into a single identity. “I’m both. I’m neither. I’m somewhere in between.”