I guess almost everyone Indian must have heard their songs which are specially famous among the students’ community. BodhiTree is a group of 7 members of XLRI college (The famous MBA Institute in India) who composed 4 rocking numbers. BodhiTree was formed on the second day on campus, Jun 12 2004. Here’s an interview of this group conducted by Jam Magazine .

1. How was the band formed?
bodhiTree was formed on the second day on campus, Jun 12 2004. [time was quite short, compared to most trees that are born by the painfully long process of grafting, transplantation and/ or plain pollination, yada yada, you know the drill.] We just sort of gravitated towards each other, spending value-added nights jamming into the wee hours of the morning. We had a one piece each of bassist, guitarist and vocalist, but the only one who showed up when we called for drummers was this petite girl with plaits called Poornima. She’d never played rock live before, but she had the rhythm in her blood. And that was it.. before we knew it, we were taking to the stage as a band.

2. How would you describe your music?
We started out as a rock band, and that’s who we are. We come with a random assortment of musical preferences - as a result the bodhiTree sound becomes a rather spicy dish: heavy on blues based rock, a left-of-the-middle alternative and a hint of metal, that tends to get overdone at times.

It’s low on predictability, but that’s what makes it exciting. The Indian influences began to surface in the summer of 2005, but that’s another story. It’s now part of our identity, and though we’re a ‘rock band’ we’re proud it’s (the Indian-ness) part of our creative streak.

3. Are you into covers or only original compositions?
We’ve gone through the motions of every Indian rock band, playing covers of our favourite bands before finding our own feet and own sound. But the focus on originals was there right from the start. In fact, our earliest song ‘Too many potatoes’ was written within two weeks of joining college - a song about first impressions in XL. Right now, we have about 6-8 originals and more in the pipeline.

4. Which songs have you composed so far?
Too Many Potatoes - A blues-based rock song, antiseptically simple in structure but a lot of fun to play. It talks about our first impressions in XL. It won the ‘Best Original Song’ at XIMB’s Decibelz, the rock competition.

Sabka Katega - This song is born of a campus incident that sparked off the phrase that made us laugh. The fact that it morphed into a song high on sentiment took even us by surprise!

5. Which is your most popular song so far?
GMD is pretty much the hit across campuses, but in XL, all the songs are popular.

6. Future songs in the pipeline?
It is a time of great emotional churn as musical minds come together, inspired by recent sojourns into the cesspools of collective creativity. No seriously. Believe us.

Plans post XL
‘Gaon mein saabun bechna’ Well, the campus job will continue to put food on the table. But we do plan to keep the spark alive. To many bright youngsters the MBA is an easy way out, and too many authors, movie makers and musicians have let their talent die, choked by the pressures of the corporate world. NOT US.

Download mp3 files:
- Gaand Mein Danda
- Sabka Katega
- Too Many Potatoes
- XL Ki Kudiyan

bodhiTree is…
Poornima Dore - Drums
Jishnu Dasgupta - Bass/ Vocals
Bharat Rajagopalan - Guitar
Abhishek Narain - Guitar/ Vocals
Satadru Bagchi - Vocals
Shambhavi Kumar - Vocals
Dhananjay Mishra - Vocals