When Deepika Padukone first shared the trailer of her new movie Gehraiyaan, I was over the moon. The millennial in me couldn’t contain the excitement about how refreshing the whole setup looked. It was aesthetically pleasing. The characters looked flawed and webbed in their complexities.
I went back to her Instagram account and re-watched it again and again because somehow, I felt that the movie was speaking the voice of the millennials.
However, what grabbed my attention was the song that was played in the first part of the trailer. It was body-pumping, soulful, peppy, youthful and extremely catchy.
This also made me realise the changing dynamic of the Indian Film Industry and how it is slowly catering to the young audience who are tired of remakes and ultra-mechanistic action movies. Very few want to engage in such action-packed drama where the hero in his six-packed abs beats the soul out of the goons while his leading lady supports him by dancing in a yellow mustard field.
The young generation wants real stories where the characters are easily relatable with no unrealistic standards to reach for. Of course, there are action-packed movies in Hollywood too, but there is no over-the-top drama and no mid-break songs to dance to amidst alpine forests and pristine Swiss mountains.
Doobey as a song is enthralling. Singer Lothika’s voice is Indie-fit. She sounds unconventional, raw and stimulating. It takes you to a new high, deports you to a world where two people are in love and drowned in each other’s energies. The depth of the song isn’t just in the lyrics but also in the voice that has sung it.
It is immensely satisfying to the senses because she has a kind of voice that you want to keep listening to.
Nevertheless, the song first starts with a rhythmic sound and it captures you right away. Just like a mystery novel, you want to find out what is in store. That is the kind of magic that OAFF and Savera as a team create with the song. It has a tinge of suspense, slow-paced at the beginning, and suddenly, it blasts in with feel-good beats that help you escape the reality even for a moment.
The repetition of the chorus “Haan Doobey, Haan Doobey” is like the ebb and flow of the tide in the sea. It encapsulates the roller-coaster emotions of the lovers portrayed in just a perfect manner. The music is as dreamy as the cinematography. You feel that you don’t belong to this world.
The lyrics, written by Kausar Munir, spill imageries meticulously. The song’s essence is the free-falling of the two people in love and getting enmeshed in it.
It is in sync with the movie title — Gehraiyaan (its literal translation in English is depths). And the song title, on the other hand, means “let’s sink in”. Both the words seemingly connote something related to the ocean and Munir cleverly weaves his words that the images you form while tuning to the song are shoreline, coasts, boats, seas and Pinterest-y sunsets.
He writes “Do Kashtiyaan Humari Yun Takragayi”. It is the meeting of the two hearts that he is talking about, but he packs the underlying meaning with everything ocean-related. You cannot help but wonder the way his mind may have worked while penning down such pleasing sentences.
On the first day of the release, the song was largely accepted by the young Indian audience. When I connected to my virtual friend on Instagram, we were similarly possessed by the song. I guaranteed to listen to it more than 20 times while he confessed that he would listen more than 30 times.
I told him that I was dancing and he said that he wanted to join me. Doobey indeed wreaked havoc in the ecosystem of the younger generation and it provided us with fresh air to breathe.
Does this collective enthusiasm then speak about the changing face of India? Our song preferences and movie choices are no more the same as they used to be. We do not want to be duped with remakes; action movies are too far from the truth, NRI love stories are now unpopular and Saas Bahu will only serve the telly watchers well.
Songs with heavy auto-tunes lack their originality, body-pumping beats with shallow lyrics stay on the trend just for a while, but a song like Doobey is more than just a song. This generation wants to live in an inclusive society. We want to look more within than out.
Humans carry more depth than what is just seen on the periphery. In our real-life stories too, we are complicated characters entangled in the web of our thoughts and emotions.
Doobey calls out to sink in, to drown, and we do that whenever we listen to the song. The song makes us meet with the depth of our own emotions.
Hence, “Uff Yeh Gehraiyaan”.