She’s making her point

“AA dot is small but significant. Depending on where you place it, it can change the meaning of a sentence,” says musician Aditi Saigal, 25. It’s only partly why she chose it for her stage name. When she was little, growing up in Delhi, she’d work on jumbo colouring books with her mother, theatre actor Shena Gamat. A perfectionist, even then, Aditi would get annoyed when her mother would colour outside the lines. “Mum told me, ‘A dot never hurt anyone. But it makes the picture more beautiful’,” Dot. recalls. So, at 18, when she went to Wales to study music and creative writing, and was ready to colour outside the lines of her own life, the switch from “Hi I’m Aditi”, to “Hi. I’m Dot.” came naturally.

Dot.’s big moment came early. In 2017, she was in Wales when her song, Everybody Dances to Techno, went viral. The acoustic jazzy solo about moving to music, and liking unpopular tunes, features just her on the keyboard singing her heart out, and has had more than half a million plays on Youtube. When she moved back to India in the waning months of the pandemic, ready to pursue a music career, she stumbled on to the opportunity of a lifetime. On a Zoom call with film director Zoya Akhtar, while they were discussing the lyrics to her song Asymmetrical for The Archies movie, Akhtar noticed that Dot. reminded her of Ethel Muggs, Riverdale’s resident nerd. Akhtar asked if Dot. would like to audition. She did, and just like that, landed a role in the most talked-about Bollywood film of 2023.

Dot. says that most reactions to her name stem from curiosity and good humour. Some want to

know her last name. Some say, “Dot dot dot. If there were three of you, you would be ellipses”. Twentyfive and already two miracles old, she’s making sure she’s much more than that.

lWarming up

Dot. couldn’t have escaped music even if she tried. Her father is the late Amit Saigal, founder and editor of the music magazine Rock Street Journal, and a legendary music promoter. The Saigals played Louis Armstrong at parties. Ella Fitzgerald’s Happy Talk was a fam favourite. She cites Peggy Lee’s Black Coffee album, downloaded off Limewire, as an influence.

Dot. and dad share a love for Pentagram, Parikrama and electropop pioneer Imogen Heap. At 13, she’d already written a few songs. They are, by her own admission, cheesy. She listened to Paolo Nutini, Fiona Apple and KT Tunstall as she got older.

Moviemaking, however, took her and her music in an unplanned direction. “It was great platform to launch my career, especially because a music-based film, set in the ’60s, resonated with me even aesthetically,” Dot. says. “It was a much bigger project than I could even begin to anticipate. I live only a small slice of that lifestyle. Tackling fame is one of the hardest parts of this job. A lot of us creative people just want to do our jobs. And being famous is a whole another job. Being in the public eye is daunting and demanding.”

It also fosters collaborations and amplifies niche sounds like nothing else. Dot. collaborated with Tejas Menon for the music of The Archies. On set, she met young crew members brimming with talent. One of them, Hawwa, the AD on the movie, ended up directing the video for her 2024 song Girls

Night. And it’s made her consider creating pop music, rather than shining in niche corners.

Since the movie came out (with the accompanying promotional blitz), Dot. has played to sold-out concerts. “People have sung my lyrics back to me. The first time it happened I thought it was so cool! That feeling doesn’t go away. I cherish that more than the fame,” she admits.

lBranching out

Collaborating with local indie musicians has been rewarding. Dot. has performed her original compositions with Bengaluru hip-hop group Till Apes, and recently took the stage at Spoken Fest in Mumbai. “I’ve found it hard to work with other people, before” she admits. “So, I’ve made it a mission to delve into it and make myself learn through them. When you don’t match and can’t work together, you learn your boundaries, what you value and what you want to accomplish.”

She’s also working on an album, Sea Creature on the Sofa, polishing one song that’s electronic, and another that’s acoustic. “I’m trying to go in two directions at once, which is a little insane and hard to market,” she admits. “I’m not going to limit myself. Even if you’re collaborating with artistes just for the heck of it, what’s wrong with that?”

As she navigates life in Mumbai, she is also pursuing an MA in Education, another field of interest, the way acting is now. “I’ve kept my mind open as to what I am and what I want to be. Defining myself as a musician is too narrow. I like being a little fried mentally.”

SSave your pity. There are no sad stories here. A growing number of Indians – married, attached and single – are choosing to not have children. They’re not childless; they identify as child-free. They’ll tell you why: Kids aren’t an essential component of a happy life; not producing offspring puts an end to generational trauma and genetically transferred medical conditions; it allows for greater individual freedoms. Besides, it’s better on the environment and on the pocket.

But child-free folks shouldn’t have to tell you anything. It’s as much of a personal choice as having kids. And yet, most of them go through life having to justify their decision to friends, family and the upstairs neighbour, and to prove, somehow, that they’re not low-key psychopaths.

“The only problem with not wanting kids is having to tell people about it over and over,” says

single and founder of travel company Vagabond Experiences. “It’s

Married. Corporate professional better than having kids I didn’t want in the first place, but in 2024, it’s still a problem.”

Brunch spoke to Fernandes along with other child-free Indians, on what it means to plan a life without children, and the challenges along the way.

lBetter together

Corporate professional lives in Mumbai and has been married for 12 years to her college sweetheart, who did not wish to be named. Both worry about bringing a child into a world heading towards destruction. “Genocide takes place so often, the climate is degrading day by day, and there are so many other problems,” Ghosh says. “e worry that the planet will not be liveable by the time our children grow up.”

For their extended family, however, the bigger problem is that the couple is selfishly choosing their own happiness over that of a potential larger family. Ghosh recalls facing the pressure acutely some years ago. “When we had been married for five or six years, our families really wanted us to have children,” she recalls. Family gatherings were stressful. “At my brother’s wedding in 2019, extended relatives kept asking us about kids. They weren’t even close to me, they weren’t clued into my life. It was so intrusive. Another time, a neighbour whom I rarely talk to, whose name I don’t even know, leaned out of her balcony while I was walking past and asked why I’m not having kids and if there’s a problem with me!”

It gets crazier. A distant relative once told her that she was being selfish by choosing not to have children. “It was hilarious!” she recalls. “They implied that I’m being selfish toward a person that doesn’t exist! Ultimately, having children or

MADHUSHREE GHOSH,