But even as composers like Adnan Sami collaborate with Jermaine Jackson and ShankarEhsaan-Loy work with a Timbaland associate, the prolific music composer duo, Vishal-Shekhar, has been oddly silent, with no news about going international from their quarter. But from what Vishal Dadlani has to say, it is likely that the duo is on the verge of closing major deals with producers in the US.

Growing market "We have been having talks for over an year now and are currently in various stages of negotiation with a big hip-hop music producer in the US, as well as one of the world's leading r `n' b divas," says Dadlani.
"We have never spoken about any of this so far, because we haven't yet signed on contracts yet. We don't believe in making noise unless we can back it up."

Dadlani goes on to reveal that the duo has been to Los Angeles earlier this year, where they had several meetings with A-list artistes and producers, and are heading to the US again next week to possibly close a couple of deals. "A R Rahman has opened the way for Indian musicians," says Dadlani. "Western artistes look at musicians from India with great respect now and treat us as equals.

In every conversation that we've had with labels in the US, we've found that they want to tap our industry as much as we do theirs." The composers, who have had only one release this year with Aladin, have been careful about choosing the right international projects and have even turned down offers to compose for a couple of disapora films. "We are very clear about one thing," Dadlani spells out, "We will not work on an international project unless we receive equal billing on it. We want to collaborate as artistes, and not as producers ­ we would ideally like to bounce around in concerts with an artiste we end up working with. Till then, we are happy being big fish in a small pond" Even as things materialize on the international front with Vishal-Shekhar, the duo is happy working on its upcoming projects ­ Dharma Productions' I Hate Love Stories, Siddharth Anand's Anjaana Anjaani and UTV's Arjun. But Dadlani particularly also seems to be enjoying his newfound innings as a playback singer.

The composer, who also doubles up as the lead vocalist for rock band Pentagram, has sung for Vishal Bharadwaj in Kaminey (`Dhan te nan'), Pritam in Dhoom 2(`Dhoom again'), Rajesh Roshan in Krazzy 4 (Title track), (Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy in various projects (including `Barson re' in London Dreams) and is now burning the airwaves with Salim-Sulaiman's new release, Kurbaan, where he has sung the angsty-rock title track. Then, there are the ten-odd tracks he has sung for his own albums.

No illusions Dadlani plays down his playback singing assignment, saying he just "happens to have" a unique voice and attitude, and he is singing only because he's friends with most of the composers. "I have no illusions about my voice as a playback singer," he laughs. "I'm a bad playback singer and everyone I work with knows that. I'm probably the flavour of the month, but the fact is that I'll never overshadow singers like Sonu (Niigaam), Shaan and K K."

Even so, the composer admits that singing for other composers helps him learn his craft better.
"When I work with a composer like Shankar Mahadevan, who is one of the best singers in India, I learn a thing or two about singing," Dadlani says.

But, of course, point out to him that he is the vocalist of one of India's biggest rock bands, and he instantly quips, "I was just talking about playback singing. When I perform with Pentagram, I'm the best f**king singer in the world!"

The next day, Dadlani again tweeted, "We're not doing Mood I. They messed up on the PR." On the following day, Dadlani confirmed that the duo has pulled out, citing "poor management" as the reason.

Dadlani's version When asked what went wrong, Dadlani said, "When we were asked to play the concert, my first tweet was, "It's like going back home" since I have played on the Mood Indigo stage so many times."

"But Shekhar and I do more concerts than any music director and we have specific PR instructions that go out before a show," he continued. "These guys were not able to meet them and they mismanaged the PR, and they couldn't correct it. So we pulled out."

After the duo pulled out, the students roped in ShankarEhsaan-Loy at the last minute, and the concert, scheduled for December 24, went off smoothly. But the IIT students and faculty aren't pleased with Dadlani's comments.

When contacted, Professor P Gopalan, Dean of Students Affairs at IIT Mumbai, said, "They had a set of expectations which were beyond our control, and were not a part of our MoU with them. They told us about them two days ago, and said they'd pull out of the concert if they were not met."

IIT speaks out He added, "But I'd rather be happy that we got someone as big as Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy to play for us. They were more than gracious to come at the last moment. Thanks to their timely help, they are always welcome at Mood Indigo every year from now on."

The IIT students were more forthright with their comments, when contacted. They insisted that it had nothing to do with the PR, and provided us with records of the PR activities involving the duo.

Ishank Gupta, Overall Coordinator of Mood Indigo revealed, "We had six hoardings, 4 ads on buses, presence in Baristas and McDonalds outlets across the city, presence on more than a 1000 out of home media screens, radio coverage for 10 days and posters in 3500 colleges across the country, involving VishalShekhar exclusively. I don't understand how they could still complain about the PR.

Maybe they don't know the meaning of the term."

Gupta, who has led the team of students at IIT to put up the country's biggest college festival, said that the duo's manager wanted another full page article in newspapers after the entire publicity campaign, two days before the festival, and pulled out when that didn't happen. "I was in touch with their manager, Abhishek," Gupta said. "In spite of the publicity, he still wanted an article.

When we explained to him that we don't own city newspapers, he said that he was keeping half our money as a cancellation fee."

"I think Vishal-Shekhar are unlucky to have the worst manager ever, who tries to manipulate students into giving them money. In fact, we could introduce this as a busi ness idea in the next festival - to tie up with people for a con cert and cancel it at the last minute, keeping half their fee," Gupta added sarcastically.

Students angry The students also alleged that the entire incident seemed like an excuse and that Vishal Shekhar may have had anoth er concert, where they were getting more money. "The manager eventually returned the money but said he was doing a favour by doing so. I find it hard to believe that such wellknown artistes like Vishal-Shekhar would be so dishonest and untruthful in their dealings with students."

"I'm just glad they didn't cancel on the day of the con cert. More than anything else, I'm very thankful to Shankar Ehsaan-Loy for agreeing to a concert with just two days notice. In a sense, we are lucky that Vishal-Shekhar left us in a lurch, since we could get better artistes instead."