By Ila Sankrityayan

New Delhi, Aug 4 (IANS): It was not an easy journey for music composer and singer Adnan Sami to lose over 100 kilos. He says it was exercise and right eating that helped him in his road to fitness and has now put an end to all "misconceptions" about him going under the knife.

"I've had a tremendous amount of struggle with my weight from many years. I was 230 kilos once upon a time. And I lost 130 kilos, it was not an easy journey. But the point was that it was something that I really needed to do," he says.

Adnan continues: "So, I've worked hard to maintain it and you know I did it completely through exercise and dieting. There's a misconception that people think that I underwent some surgery or took some kind of medical treatment which is absolutely false."

"I controlled entire intake and I did plenty of exercise and I play a lot of squash that's how I've maintained it. And I do it primarily because it's very important to be healthy."

The 50-year-old singer who was making headlines for deleting his social media account reveals that he never deleted posts from his Instagram handle rather archived them. He wanted to come up with a new music video 'Alvida' and surprise his fans after a gap of two years.

"I took a gap of two years because I think the whole world took a gap of two years because of pandemic. And so the world had come to a pause and there was no point in releasing anything during that time. I needed a bit of time off to get a hold of myself and also to re-evaluate my whole life. I think it took me a while to come around to deciding how I wanted to proceed with my forthcoming journey and how to realign myself."

He adds about the idea behind the track and says: "'Alvida' is a song about heartbreak. But I wanted to write a song that was far more universal than just a romantic break-up but also a kind of a song that conveyed the emotions of what one feels when they are away from their loved ones, regardless of whether that person is a partner or a very close friend or even a parent."

It took a couple of months for him to compete this song. He shares: "The song is the fusion between contemporary and traditional sounds and instruments because I always feel that we should always retain a certain element of our own culture."

What is he planning next? and he replies: "I'm going to be playing a lot. That's one of the endeavours of my new approach to life in my musical journey henceforth, which I'm calling 'Adnan 2.0'. I took a lot of gaps between my music releases and I intend to reduce that. There are a lot of songs now that I have put together and shortlisted with Saregama."