The Parikrama band was only ever meant to last four months. In 1991 Subir Malik was due to join his family's motor-parts business, and he wanted one last run at the music he loved. "I need to play some [Led] Zeppelin and [Pink] Floyd and [Deep] Purple and AC/DC and [Iron] Maiden before I say goodbye and sell Jeep motor parts all my life," he told Variety India in 2026. Thirty-five years later, the Delhi band that told fans to pirate its songs, opened for Iron Maiden and never made an album is still playing, and still writing.

In our 13 October 2026 snapshot, five Parikrama songs sit on Spotify's Rock in India playlist.

Parikrama band at a glance

  • Formed: 1991, New Delhi; first show at Father Agnel School, Delhi
  • Founding lineup: Subir Malik (keyboards), Nitin Malik (vocals), Sonam Sherpa (lead guitar), Chintan Kalra (bass), Prashant Bahadur (guitar) and Rahul Malhotra
  • Current members: Nitin Malik (vocals), Subir Malik (keyboards, organ), Saurabh Chaudhry (guitar), Abhishek Mittal (lead guitar), Gaurav Balani (bass), Srijan Mahajan (drums)
  • Sound: English-language classic rock with Indian violin, tabla, flute and sitar
  • Known for: "But It Rained", "Am I Dreaming" and a famously piracy-friendly approach
  • Milestones: supporting Iron Maiden in Bengaluru, then opening Download Festival's main stage in the UK (2007); the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC (2011)
  • Latest single: "Inside My Skin" (17 June 2026, the band's 35th anniversary)
  • On Spotify's Rock in India: "I Believe" with Agnee and Shilpa Rao (track 27), "Demons of Time" (49), "Life Is Certain" (54), "Translucent Night" (60), "Don't Cut Me Down" (65)

How did the Parikrama band begin?

Subir Malik found the seed of the band at a college fest at IIT Kanpur. "A young band was performing its first show and it was pretty bad, but they were playing Rolling Stones and the kind of music I wanted to play," he told the Hindustan Times in 2016. Two of them quit before the first rehearsal, so Malik pulled in three more people. The lineup that played the first show included his younger brother Nitin on vocals and Sonam Sherpa, a guitarist from Kalimpong.

At that first school show, the organisers had promised Rs 500 for the whole band; delighted, they paid every member Rs 500 instead. The four-month plan kept getting extended. Parikrama had an original, "Xerox", from the start, and in 1995 decided to focus on their own songs; "Till I'm No One Again" dates from that year. Their first IIT Bombay Mood Indigo show, on 28 December 1995, lost them money, Malik told Rolling Stone India, but promoter Farhad Wadia saw it and booked them for Rock Yatra and, for years after, Independence Rock.

That same year, a top label offered them "a huge amount of money" to switch to IndiPop. They said no. "We heard everyone, analyzed and then did what we wanted to do," Malik told Rolling Stone India in 2026.

Why did Parikrama give their music away?

Parikrama set two rules early: no member would rely on the band for a living (Malik calls it their best decision), and the music was for sharing. "We had written boldly on our website, 'We believe in piracy' and then there was a little smaller font like terms and conditions, where it said, '…of our own music,'" he told Rolling Stone India in 2024. Bootleg tapes and CDs circulated with the band's blessing; from a website live as early as 1995, they posted songs for free download instead of releasing an album. "We always told our fans to make an album with the tracks that we have on the site," Malik said in 2016.

It worked because Parikrama built their following on stage: over a hundred shows a year in 2016, more than 3,500 in total by 2026. Indian Ocean's Rahul Ram calls Malik the scene's original band manager. "Subir kuch bhi kar sakta hai" (Subir can do anything), Ram told Rolling Stone India. Malik founded the artist-management agency Parikrama Inc. in 2001; Sherpa ran the Parikrama School of Music from 2003. The DIY scene we traced in our Rock in India feature grew from groundwork like this.

The cost showed later. During the pandemic the band counted more than 300 songs written; as of early 2024, only nine were officially released on streaming.

What is "But It Rained" about?

In 1995 the band read an India Today report by Harinder Baweja about foreign tourists kidnapped in Kashmir who had never been found. "That article moved us so much that we wrote a song about it," Malik told the Hindustan Times. The kidnappers were the militant group Al-Faran. The song was composed in 1996, recorded in December 2000, and released with a video in winter 2001. Malik told The New Indian Express that the video was "probably the first ever film shot in Kaza, Spiti Valley."

National TV airplay made it an anthem, and Rolling Stone India put it on its 2014 shortlist of the 25 greatest Indian rock songs of the past 25 years.

How did Parikrama end up at Download Festival?

In 2007 Iron Maiden played to 25,000 fans at Bangalore Palace Grounds, and Parikrama were one of two Indian support acts. "We played two extra songs on their request," Malik told DNA, as quoted by Brave Words. Maiden's manager, Rod Smallwood, was floored: "I just didn't realise there were metal/rock bands of this quality in India," he said on Iron Maiden's website. He had them added to Download.

On Sunday 10 June 2007, at 11am, Parikrama opened Download's main stage at Donington Park, on the day Iron Maiden headlined. Maiden's site called it the first time an Indian rock act had played a major music festival outside India. Maiden also invited them to Brixton Academy for its benefit show for former drummer Clive Burr. With the Kennedy Center in 2011, the band count these as their three biggest milestones.

Who are Parikrama's members after Sonam Sherpa?

On 14 February 2020, Sonam Sherpa died of cardiac arrest in Kurseong, West Bengal. He was 48. Rolling Stone India said his name was "synonymous with Indian rock". On 8 October 2020, his birthday, the band re-released the "But It Rained" video restoring a 22-second solo once cut for TV, recovered from old handycam footage. "He was the heart of the band and will be forever," Malik said.

Abhishek Mittal, of instrumental band Submarine In Space, took over lead guitar, debuting on "Translucent Night". He plays alongside the Malik brothers, guitarist Saurabh Chaudhry, bassist Gaurav Balani and drummer Srijan Mahajan, who joined in 2007.

Which Parikrama songs are on Rock in India?

All five belong to the band's recent studio phase; Malik admits they used to hate the studio.

  • "I Believe" (track 27) comes from The Dewarists. Parikrama, Agnee and Shilpa Rao made it together in Pune for the show's 2011 first season; it became a streaming single in 2019.
  • "Demons of Time" (49), released in November 2023, completes a trilogy of songs inspired by The Lord of the Rings, after "Am I Dreaming" and "Tears of the Wizard".
  • "Life Is Certain" (54) came out in January 2024. The band describe it as "our own inner voice guiding us with clarity of thought."
  • "Translucent Night" (60) was released in August 2023 with a video encouraging organ donation. All six members pledged to donate their organs.
  • "Don't Cut Me Down" (65) was written in 1996 about deforestation and finally released as a studio single on 24 September 2024.

Where do Parikrama stand at 35?

"Inside My Skin" came out on 17 June 2026, the band's 35th anniversary. It grew from a heavy riff by Saurabh Chaudhry, with Nitin Malik's lyrics about anxiety. The run-up was hard, with Nitin's health faltering from December 2024. Yet in April they played nearly three and a half hours at Kolkata's Jadavpur University to a reported 15,000, who demanded unrehearsed acoustic songs like "Till I'm No One Again". At their anniversary party in New Delhi, Sonam Sherpa's son Nathan joined them for "But It Rained". A documentary by Aankit Singh, Parikrama – The Wheel of Indian Rock, is due.

Malik counts Parikrama among a generation that stayed independent on purpose. "All of us – Euphoria, DR, Thermal And A Quarter, Great Society, Indian Ocean – we all made independent bands because we wanted to be independent," he told Rolling Stone India. Peers like Motherjane and younger acts from Thaikkudam Bridge to The Local Train found other routes to listeners; Parikrama helped prove it could be done without a label.

The four-month project that Subir Malik once planned has now lasted 35 years.

FAQ

Who are the members of the Parikrama band?

Nitin Malik (vocals), Subir Malik (keyboards), Saurabh Chaudhry (guitar), Abhishek Mittal (lead guitar), Gaurav Balani (bass) and Srijan Mahajan (drums). Founding lead guitarist Sonam Sherpa died in February 2020.

When was Parikrama formed?

In 1991 in New Delhi, by Subir Malik with Nitin Malik, Sonam Sherpa, Chintan Kalra, Prashant Bahadur and Rahul Malhotra. They marked their 35th anniversary on 17 June 2026.

Has Parikrama released an album?

No conventional studio album. For decades they gave songs away free and encouraged copying; they now release singles on streaming platforms, most recently "Inside My Skin" (2026).

What is Parikrama's most famous song?

"But It Rained" (video released 2001), about families of tourists kidnapped in Kashmir in 1995. Rolling Stone India shortlisted it among the greatest Indian rock songs in 2014.

Sources

Cover photo: Parikrama performing live at Pearl 2010, BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus, by Sinapda via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parikrama_at_pearl.jpg). Modified: cropped and resized.