Swarsiddhi Academy of Music (Akshi Dhiman)
Second Floor, H Block, Shop No 10, Plot 169, Sector 12, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India
Swarsiddhi Academy of Music, founded and personally mentored by acclaimed vocalist Akshi Dhiman, sits in a quiet lane of Gurugram’s Sector 56 yet fills two bright, acoustically-treated floors with a steady hum of tanpuras, metronomic tihai practice and the occasional burst of mid-range laughter.
From the street one sees only a modest brass plate etched with the academy’s name, but once the glass door swings open the visitor is met by warm terracotta walls hung with enlarged photographs—Lata Mangeshkar whispering to Pt. Jasraj, a nineteen-year-old Akshi standing beside a young violinist who now tours Europe, and, at child-height, a line of crayon portraits drawn by the youngest batch every September 5th, Teacher’s Day.
Akshi Dhiman herself teaches the senior and diploma levels in a lime-green room reclaimed from what used to be her mother’s sewing parlour; the ceiling’s original rose-pattern is still faintly visible through translucent panels designed to soften harsh spotlight reflection. Surrounding her are an upright 88-key Yamaha that hides a Beatles tunebook in its bench, a tanpura rented since 1998 that still manages to hold pitch, and black metal music stands bearing the lyrics of raag Bageshree written in Akshi’s sprawling hindi-gurumukhi hybrid hand.
Two rooms away, beginners aged eight to forty-one perch on low gaddas facing an electronic scale board synced to a custom app. The app, built by Akshi’s software-engineer brother, lights up a blue dot when the shuddh ‘ma’ is hit correctly and blinks red if it slips toward tivra; children have taken to calling the red dot “Mr. Boo-boo.” Between songs students sip from the one-litre steel kettles that line a shelf marked “rasna—no sugar.”
Further along, an internal courtyard opens to a bonsai-pepaled banyan that Akshi insists on watering herself. Crisscrossing wires muffle traffic noise so that indoor-outdoor practice sessions—where khayal merges with afternoon breeze—can be conducted directly under its limbs. Shorter weekend workshops in Microsoft Teams friendly formats lately echo here using a weather-proof Samsung Frame TV bolted to brick.
Fees operate on a graduated scale: Rs 2,200 for pre-Praveshika, Rs 3,400 until Visharad-II, then a sliding scholarship for post-diploma aspirants, funded by an American benefactor who once heard Akshi sing Tarana in Faridabad and mailed a cheque still pinned to the office cork board beside her “no alcohol before riyaaz” sign. Annual “Swarsangam” concerts take place at the open-air Nehru Park amphitheatre in December; last year, students interpreted The Beatles’ “Because” in Mishr Jog, then segued into a thumri about migrating swans, receiving a standing ovation from the British Council director seated next to the Sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan.
Altogether, Swarsiddhi is less a coaching centre than Akshi Dhiman’s living extension: every floorboard remembers a sur, every shard of afternoon light catches the tilt of her aalap before curving lovingly into the ears of the next voice testing its wings.
Check on Google Maps
- Published: August 6, 2025
