Before I even knew how life-changing music would be in my life, I had books. And as a kid who spent a lot of time by myself at home, attacking the bookshelf was the only way I knew how to spend my time, because my parents would be big-time screen-lockers.
It started with Roald Dahl and Sudha Murthy and when I was around thirteen I started reading Sidney Sheldon, PG Woodehouse (I understood nothing), and reading became how I framed and viewed the world around me. It’s how I understood things I didn’t see immediately. I didn’t grow up with siblings so my first encounter with them was the Weasley family in Harry Potter, the boisterous noise and the constant jostling were something I experienced through the portal of stories.
Reading is a very patient but simple endeavor. It asks only for your patience and your time, which is probably why so many people find it difficult to keep up with in our age of instant gratification. Literature and music have always been interconnected — at least for me. But it was solidified for me when I read Caleb Azumah Nelson’s ‘Open Water’, a book so intertwined with music that it makes you feel like you’re reading an album.
To dig deeper into these parallel worlds of these art forms, we spoke to 7 homegrown musicians about how they were influenced and inspired by pieces of literature, because both forms demand immersion and most importantly, both ask you to surrender time.
SCayos says the book that has stayed with him the longest is 'When Languages Die' by K. David Harrison, which follows the author’s travels documenting endangered languages and the cultures lost with them. “He helped me realise how powerful language is, and how much information is built into the way we speak,” says Scayos. The book made him understand both the limits of music and the deeply primal part of the brain music taps into. While most people treat music as something in the background, playing it while working, driving, or doing other activities, he believes its real power lies in how instinctively it cuts through to the subconscious, shaping moods and influencing how we feel without us even realising it.
For the book that best fits one of his songs, he chose ‘michigan,’ written with his friends Juliana Chahahyed and Andy Min, alongside We Love You — a collection of poems, essays, and photographs by Min and Thomas Sullivan. For him, the book carries the same emotional texture as the song. “It’s just this cozy book that doesn’t feel too daunting. It’s optimistic, and it makes you care about the planet that we live on. Poetry directly makes me a better artist. It gives me access to ways in which others have used words to make me feel things.”
"We all have an emotional pool within us, our emotions are infinite but the range of them is innately universal," he continues. "There is something about poetry that manages to extract from this pool without seeming forced."
Follow SCayos on Instagram here and listen to his music on YouTube music here.
“Reading in general has made me pay a lot more attention to what’s not being said. That’s really changed how I listen to music too,” says Anumita Nadesan. Books and literature manage to capture the silences and uncertainty of life so organically, without forcing it. And it’s these “smaller” feelings that really resonate with people. “It’s also taught me to let a song breathe,” she adds.
A book that really resonated with her was ‘High Fidelity’ by Nick Hornby, a novel about fandom culture and the music industry. “What stuck wasn’t just the music obsession, but the way the book shows us hiding behind taste. Music, opinions, lists. As if liking the right things makes you interesting enough that you don’t actually have to show up emotionally,” says Nadesan as she speaks about how we often get used to analysing, drawing comparisons and rationalising our feelings because of everything we consume, and it becomes much more easier to be complacent and never actually sit with those emotions.
When asked to pick a part of her discography she sees sitting beside a book, she chose ‘Aas Paas’ from her 2025 album 'rang', pairing it with a collection of Sahir Ludhianvi’s poems. “Not a big, heavy book, more the kind you keep coming back to, opening randomly and reading a page or two. They feel connected in how quietly they hold emotion.”
Follow Anumita Nadesan on Instagram here and listen to her music on YouTube music here.
For Sakré, 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' by Yuval Noah Harari inspires him both personally and artistically. “The focus on what makes us human keeps growing in me. My creative process was driven more towards showing my human side rather than making it perfect.”
Drawing deep inspiration from his own city, Bengaluru, extracting its sounds and rhythms to shape his music, Sapiens, rooted in humanity’s evolution, mirrors the city’s own journey into the vibrant cacophony it is today.
Sakré states that his focus has always been on the physical and tactile elements of music that make it innately human — even the mistakes; especially the mistakes. He admits that he does not read as much as he intends to (don’t we all), but the practice of reading has widened his horizons. “Reading has opened my mind to understanding the depth of narratives an artist conveys, which extend beyond their sound.”
When asked to imagine one of his songs living on a bookshelf beside a book that mirrors its inner life, he places it next to 'The Humans' by Matt Haig, a story about an alien who comes to Earth and unexpectedly falls in love with humanity’s flaws, as both Sakré’s songs and the novel share a tender sense of wonder and vulnerability that feels deeply, unmistakably human.
We’re all complacent in reaching for our phones in every small break we get, and Skulk aka Katyani Garg is no exception. And to combat this habit that has become an innate instinct now, she keeps a pile of poetry on her table, and these books have completely changed how she looks at music and the creative process.
“I started making my second album, 'Skin', about three years ago. And in retrospect I realise that I only felt I had something good to hold on to when I started working on lyrics. I’ve paid a lot more care and carved them with intention this time round. All because of the women poets on my desk," she says.
Two books that she continuously returns to are Mary Oliver’s ‘Dream Work’ and Kamala Das’ ‘Selected Poems’. She points that particularly after moving to Goa, Oliver's writing has started speaking to her even more. Her work derives highly from nature. It feels like she calls to nature not just to be her muse but also her co-author. Garg Garg puts her effect on the mind perfectly: “I see her in the restless grass always moving when I walk through paddy fields in the evening, in the shy porcupine I’ve befriended who visits in the night, in the calling of the crickets, announcing the arrival of inky nights."
Follow Skulk on Instagram here and listen to her music on YouTube music here.
“When I was in high school and college, I was very inclined towards Khaled Hosseini’s works,” Frizzell says. Books like 'The Kite Runner' and 'A Thousand Splendid Suns', introduced her to the politics of art. “There’s an underlying emotional current in all of these subjects, be it empathy or a sense of belonging, that’s required everywhere,” she says.
For her, reading and writing music share a similar rhythm. “I love reading because it puts you in a state of flow. That’s something I really value about it, and about writing music,” she says. “You only get into flow once you’ve been doing something for 20–30 minutes and you’re completely sunken into it.” It has taught her patience, to tune out distraction and trust the process.
When it comes to imagining her music with books she says that, ‘Interlude’ from her first EP, about wanting to stop time, would sit well with 'A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking', while ‘Mum’s Lullaby’ pairs with 'Born a Crime', a Trevor Noah memoir about his life in South Africa growing up as a mixed race kid in a country ridden with apartheid.
Follow Frizzell D'Souza on Instagram here, and listen to her music on YouTube music here.
“It's always been a mix of everything,” says Varun Nimbolkar. Philosophy, classics, adolescence, management — he’s rarely reading just one book at a time. “I’m usually reading three different books at once,” he admits.
For Nimbolkar, storytelling is the backbone of any art form. “That’s the most important thing,” he says. He recalls reading 'Nadishtha', a Marathi book by Manoj Borgaonkar, where the narrator encounters a transgender person — and how that quietly deepened his sense of inclusivity. “Not that I was ever biased,” he clarifies, “but it opened me up to so many genres and experiences I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise.”
Reading, much like listening to music, demands imagination. “You have to picture the characters yourself,” he says. And perhaps that’s what connects the two most intimately.
Poetry, especially Urdu poetry, has also shaped his inner world — from Rumi to Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Jaun Elia. There’s a certain quiet despair in their work that he finds familiar. He connects this emotional undercurrent to his own release, ‘Amrita’. “It’s gone, and you know it’s gone — and you don’t even miss it, and that’s the problem,” he reflects, drawing parallels with the emotional restraint and longing found in Urdu verse.
Follow Varun Nimbolkar on Instagram here, and listen to his music on YouTube music here.
Dr. Nikhil Rao, the lead guitarist of Indian Ocean often returns to a line by biologist E. O. Wilson: “The real problem of humanity is — we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and God-like technology.” It helps him understand how wide the world is and zoom out of the smaller things and question what really matters.
While he loves reading, Rao is hesitant to draw a straight line between books and his creative process. But for him reading is an activity that demands rapt and complete attention, something increasingly rare today. “I find I get a lot out of reading a book, not merely because of the printed word but because of how my mind interacts with it, " he reflects. And possibly this could link to the greater picture of his creative practice, but he’s not entirely sure how to make a direct link.
That said, music and reading often meet in his personal rituals. He enjoys biographies of musicians and books about music, and sometimes even listens to music while reading. Some of his favourite books include autobiographies by Frank Zappa and Miles Davis, as well as Nasreen Munni Kabir’s biography of Ustad Zakir Hussain to name a few. “I used to love reading liner notes and lyrics from audio cassettes while listening,” he recalls. “That definitely enhanced the experience of listening for me.”
Follow Dr. Nikhil Rao on Instagram here, and Indian Ocean here. Listen to their music on YouTube music here.
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