When not running the family business, Yash and Avanti Birla’s son Nirvaan sings at satsangs and composes music. With his debut song set for release this week, he talks about his meditative side
Nirvaan Birla who works as CEO and MD at Birla Open Minds, says his journey with spirituality began during the family retreats to Uttarakhand. Pic/Ashish Raje
When you listen to Nirvaan Birla’s first song Alvida, you are pleasantly surprised. It’s not cliché, and it’s not following a trend—it’s soothing, with an acoustic guitar and a light percussion beat highlighting his easy, sweet voice. We find it more original than most indie songs we have heard in the past. A mix of English and Hindi, it is reminiscent of the Dave Mathews Band, or closer home, what Lucky Ali used to be—“Band karke aankhein, khud ko abhi jaga,” he sings. And though, this could have been a love song about bidding adieu to a lover—Birla had broken up a few months before he wrote it—in retrospect, it’s about letting go of things we know aren’t good for us. “We are afraid to let go; be it bad businesses, bad relationships, bad friendships. So, in the end, the song was about saying alvida to things we keep holding on to,” says the 29-year-old.
We meet Birla early on a Friday evening at the Churchgate office of Birla Open Minds, where he is CEO and MD. The educational brand runs over 160+ schools in India, and is a leader in edutech. He has joined us in crutches after he suffered a ligament tear, while playing football, a sport he is equally passionate about.
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Being the younger son of Yash and Avanti Birla—Yash is the head of the Yash Birla Group which is an industrial conglomerate—running a business comes naturally to him, but that he was interested in music is something we chanced upon on Instagram. In one of the videos, he is singing spiritual music at a satsang. “Since I was eight or nine years old, I used to study classical music. I had a masterji who would come over, and I’d learn the harmonium and ragas. My parents would encourage me to sing at the satsangs, and I got that training and exposure. I had a knack for this kind of singing, and also had a good voice,” says Birla. In school, he was part of a band. “I grew up listening to rock, so I started singing that. My voice adapted to that. Now, I sing Hindi and English,” he says, adding,“It’s not a hobby… It’s a passion that I want to put a lot of time into. It’s a goal, not a career.”
His debut song Alvida, which he shared with this writer, will release this week on all streaming platforms.
In the near future, the plan is to release a spiritual album. His own journey with spirituality began when his parents would take them for retreats in Uttarakhand. “We used to go to the Himalayas, and I’d be the little kid on horse back going on treks. I met a lot of sadhus there. We also often visited the kumbh mela,” he recalls, “At the time, I was there because my parents asked me to do this…”
It was only later when he was around 14, that he realised that “it [spirituality] was coming to me organically—I started going for mediation and visiting the ashram”. Nothing life-defining happened at the time, he clarifies. “I am super grateful for my beautiful childhood; I had everything I needed. I never needed to find myself, because I was never lost. It was more about something inside me blossoming. The seed was always there—I had this hunger for spirituality and knowledge.” At the age of 18, he went for his first vipassana. “I used to go for Bhagavad Gita classes. It propelled me on that journey, and music became that avenue for me to express it.” For the businessman, it’s not as much about the words, but the feeling that moves him. While performing, his eyes are always shut. “You know when your mind goes blank, and you feel one with the music,” he tells us.
Like a tree with different branches, Birla says that all the parts of him—be it business, singing or sports—come from the same place. “It’s the place of breath. Music is also about working with your breath. And so is meditation and spirituality. Once you control your breath and mind, you can control everything.”
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