Yashraj Mukhate’s musical twists to dialogues ranging from TV shows to reality shows have been a social media rage since he broke into the scene with his hilarious and quirky rendition of Kokilaben’s dialogue of ‘Rasode mein Kaun tha‘. Be it the now iconic ‘Saath Nibhana Saathiya‘ Rasoda scene or Shehnaaz Gill’s Tommy one-liner or the latest ‘Pawri mashup’, Mukhate has managed to make his fans guffaw to it.
Aurangabad-born Mukhate’s rising popularity has been attributed to the fact that he has managed at creating very quirky and fun content spontaneously that has managed to strike a chord with everyone, especially the millennials. In a conversation with Humans of Bombay, the music composer has opened up about his journey till now and his love for music which helped him choose a unique path to his social media fame.
Talking about when he got his first musical instrument, Mukhate says, “I was 3 when Baba got me a keyboard; I fell in love with music that day. I’d carry it with me everywhere and would play it every chance I got. Even then, I knew I wanted to be a musician.”
But his parents insisted he finish his education before he ventured into composing music and he did the same.
Yashraj says that even though he pursued engineering in college, his evenings consisted of learning instruments and everything he could about music from Youtube. Not having proper instruments never deterred him and he created music out of bowls or chocolate wrappers. He soon started making song covers and posted them on the web.
Work started trickling in the form of jingles and even though it was a small way to start, Yashraj says he was content doing work for music. And then it happened. He says, “I saw the Kokila Ben’s video, the dialogue already had a rhythm to it, so I worked on the dialogue for a day and posted it online the next morning. I switched off my phone after that.”
The response to his video was something so huge that Yashraj said it was a lot to process. From Smriti Irani to Anurag Kashyap, he received high praises from everyone. Interviews, collaborations, invites to shows as guests, the young musician witnessed it all.
But Mukhate is not naïve. He knows how social media functions so he didn’t expect the craze to go on for so long. But videos like the recent ‘Pawri ho rhi hai’ again went viral and the social media crowd clearly loves and wants more from him.
He says, “The small surprises I keep getting in the form of Tapsee Pannu recreating Biggini Shoot or Raveena Tandon Ma’am making a reel on ‘Tommy’ keep me going.” Mukhate is ready to accept whatever surprises or curveballs life hurls at him after this. But for now, as our favourite saying goes, “Abhi toh pawri ho rahi hai!”