Inga’s ‘Oooh Lady!’ Is Rock and Roll When We Need It

In what might seem like a lifetime ago, Inga aka Aishwarya Sridharan was on a reality show about running a shack in Goa and generally part of the music and entertainment industry. Then, she went to True School of Music in 2017 on a scholarship and became a part of the music circuit as a songwriter, performer and more.

She went on to win the nationwide talent hunt NEXA Music in 2023, featuring on the cover of our March 2023 issue, right next to master composer and the platform’s mentor A.R. Rahman. Even as songs like “Say My Name” and “Bad Intentions” came out as part of NEXA Music, Inga was bringing out a conceptually-linked set of three songs, the most recent of them being “Oooh Lady!” which was out in March. It was preceded by singles like “Blown My Cover” and “Days Go By,” all power-packed songs that showcase Inga’s distinctly free-wheeling, flower-power vocals that tell of a journey into self-discovery.

Although Inga has played everything from Bossa Nova sets to her own songs at concerts across India, her strength lies in making primal yet polished music that draws from the hypnotic rhythms of keys, percussion and of course, her vocals. “Oooh Lady!” was the final of three songs made with producer, arranger and keyboardist Rohit Chacko, bassist Arnav Lou Fernandes and percussionist Shahrukh Sherief Padiyath, who also feature in the music videos for each track.

Inga says the primal-ness comes from her need for things to be “larger than life” in her music. She says, “I feel like I have to finesse myself in social interactions too much that I feel like the stage is the one place that I can really be wild and it will be accepted and not scary [for audiences].”

There’s a special bond that Inga speaks about with Chacko, whom she found in Mumbai music circles around 2017. “I’d just moved into this house in Bandra […] I had this cocoon and I could be as hedonistic as I wanted to be,” she says. Most of these songs came from “drunken jamming,” Inga says with a laugh. “These songs are reflective of that time. I’m embarrassed of that time but I’m also incredibly fond of it. In that space, I was a blooming alcoholic. I would wake up and drink gin and say, ‘Chal let’s make a song!’” the artist adds.

There was an acute sense of self-awareness in those times, which drove the songs and aligned with the idea of Inga, which takes its name from Tamil, roughly translating to “here.” Collaborators and in an open relationship, Inga counts Chacko as her best friend and “the only person I’ve genuinely loved.” Her voice breaks as she talks about how “Days Go By” was for Chacko, for changing her deeply embedded self-critical nature. “‘Oooh Lady!’ was after I started liking myself a little bit more.”

Inga has often performed with the studio musicians who have collaborated on her recent singles, although she does have a floating group of instrumentalists wherever she’s invited to play in, from New Delhi to Goa to Mumbai and Bengaluru. A few hall-of-fame-level gig stories have come from it so far, like when her pants tore just moments before she was scheduled to get on stage at The Piano Man, New Delhi in January. She was desperately seeking a safety pin from anyone in the venue but instead found a patron who was willing to give her a skirt. “I said, ‘What the fuck are you going to wear?’ She had tights on underneath, thanks to Delhi winters,” Inga says with a laugh.

The show goes on, with Inga plotting her next collection of songs. If her previous three-track set was written in 2017, the upcoming material had its origins in 2021 and draws more from electronic music. The EP (or mini album) is titled Intimates and might just get a similar piecemeal release plan like her previous singles towards the end of the year. “It’s a woman’s perspective on the world. When you’re between 30 and 40, it’s kind of no man’s land. You see very few women in the world at that age who are unmarried, single and really killing it and owning that space. Traversing this decade brings in a lot of insecurity but also assurance,” she says.