“Pasoori” singer Ali Sethi answered 40 questions for Vogue India on his 40th birthday

On the morning of his birthday, singer-songwriter Ali Sethi woke up worried. He’d had a fever dream in which he talked about his party going horribly wrong. Was this a sign that he should have stuck to his original plan of “inviting some friends to New York for dinner”? But that would have meant ignoring the advice of award-winning author Amitav Ghosh, who had implored him to “do something big” for his 40th and practically goaded him into throwing a soirée.

He needn’t have worried, because it was going to be an unforgettable night. Filled with many moments that you had to be there for – one of them was I have never Star Poorna Jagannathan’s “jogging dance” to ‘Be My Lover’ – Sethi’s birthday unfolded on his Insta stories, giving his followers a little appetizer of what looked like the party of a lifetime. The ‘Pasoori’ singer’s mood board for the evening was both wild and oddly specific: “I wanted it to feel like a funhouse or a mela – ‘electrifying communal’, if that makes sense,” he explains. “I wanted desi rituals and neon signs. A liminal space between a nightclub and a sangeet ceremony.” He got all that – and more. Drag artist LaWhore Vagistan led Sethi’s ‘Hybrid Darbar’ (a description coined at the party by Met curator Navina Haider) – a fusion of mujra, burlesque and what Punjabis call ‘Maut Da Khhu’ (‘Well of Death’). The medley of Sufi chants, RnB songs and hip-hop beats kept guests on their toes throughout. At one point during the evening, Sethi surprised everyone by belting out songs from his upcoming album. “I wanted unfiltered reactions to my new music and that’s what I got,” he smiles.

I ask the newly-turned-40-year-old if this was the best birthday party he’s ever had, and his answer is satisfyingly childlike: “Full to full.” Of course, as journalists, we demanded proof, and the singer was more than happy to send us pictures. Below, we take you inside Sethi’s 40th birthday party and ask him lightning-quick questions about love, life, lessons learned, and, well, of course, his new album.