A Brief history on me: I'm 26 now, been playing guitar and writing music since I was 12, been playing Sitar since I was 18. I learned most of what I know from my Dad's milkcrates of classic vinyl records from the 60's and 70's. They were my teachers, I just played along and learned by ear.
When I was 19 I moved to London England and studied sitar with a disciple of Ravi Shankar, and an incredible musician in her own right, Punita Gupta. People often ask me what made me want to take up an instument such as Sitar. It all started when one day they were playing the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival on TV. I saw Ravi Shankar's performance and fell in love right there. I feel the same way as George Harrison once said about Indian music, it felt strangely familiar to me. I recognized right away that the music is based improvisation and pure artist freedom. So after that, I was on a mission to find a Sitar.
My interests range from 60s rock to gypsy jazz to classical Indian Ragas, so my songwriting is different and I prefer to let critics take care of the categorization. Its always been hard to put my music into any category or genre because I jump from one to the other all the time. But categories in music are just like borders between countries; they will always be imaginary lines that arent really there to begin with.