Analog Hearts And Ghostly Ghazals: Inside The Deeply Personal World Of Shankara Srikantan’s ‘En Kadhalum’

Shankara Srikantan describes his work with the word thedal, a search, a restless kind of seeking, and his latest EP feels like the clearest trace of that journey so far. Moving between San Francisco, New York, and Chennai, he has shaped a sound that resists staying in one place for too long. His newest release, En Kadhalum, leans into the quiet devastation of unrequited love, the slow realization that the person you cannot stop thinking about has already chosen someone else. What follows is not just heartbreak, but the harder task of pulling yourself away from a story that was never yours, without losing your sense of self in the process.

The title track builds itself around mood rather than spectacle. Drawing from the structure of a ghazal, a form rooted in longing, Shankara lays it over a sparse piano arrangement, letting silence and restraint do most of the work. There is a noticeable warmth across the record, inspired by songwriters from the 1960s and 70s, when music was still recorded onto tape and imperfections were part of the texture. Instead of over refining his sound at Berklee College of Music, he chose to preserve that rawness, making something that felt honest to him rather than engineered for mass approval.

Behind that restraint is a period of complete immersion. Shankara recalls three months in an unfurnished apartment in San Francisco, living on instant ramen and burritos with a friend, both too consumed by their work to notice the Super Bowl happening around them. That same intensity runs through the EP. Influences from John Mayer and the Pakistani band Strings surface in the guitar work and arrangements, while his foundation in Carnatic training lingers underneath it all.

There is no attempt here to resolve the emotions the EP sits with. Instead, Shankara allows the music to stay in that in-between space, where longing does not need an answer. It is this restraint, more than anything else, that gives En Kadhalum its staying power.