India, Aug. 18 -- When Big Dawgs blew up last year around the same time, Sooraj Cherukat aKa Hanumankind wasn't ready - not for the scale, not for the speed, and definitely not for the way strangers suddenly began connecting with his words. The track's runaway success turned him from an artist slowly finding his lane into one of the most talked-about names in the Indian rap space almost overnight. And yet, ask him if he saw it coming, and his answer is instant: "I didn't anticipate any of this. you can't really predict these things. The universe unfolds in very unpredictable ways."

It's that unpredictability - both in life and in art - that seems to be a constant in his story. Long before Big Dawgs went viral, the Delhi-based rapper had ...