रंग

Released as part of the Sky Force soundtrack (Saregama, 2025), 'Rang' is the album's most folk-rooted song — a three-minute-forty-two-second duet featuring Satinder Sartaaj, the Punjabi sufi-folk star and PhD in Punjabi literature, alongside Zahrah S. Khan. Lyricist Shloke Lal wrote a deliberately lighter text to provide tonal relief within a war-film album dominated by grief and solemnity. Tanishk Bagchi's arrangement features dhol and tumbi alongside strings, creating a Punjabi folk-pop hybrid that anchors the young lovers in their cultural landscape before the war separates them.

Tanishk Bagchi opens 'Rang' with tumbi — the one-stringed plucked instrument associated with Punjabi harvest folk — before building up layers of dhol and guitar. Satinder Sartaaj's voice, trained in Punjabi classical tradition, brings an erudite folk quality rarely heard in mainstream Bollywood — his ornamentation is precise, not decorative. Zahrah S. Khan (who broke out with 'Gallan Goodiyaan' from Dil Dhadakne Do, 2015) matches his register with a contemporary pop ease. The raag-adjacent feel of the melody nods toward Kafi — the raag of spring, yearning and the folk.

Shloke Lal, among the younger generation of Bollywood lyricists, uses 'rang' (colour/hue) as the poem's central metaphor — 'tere rang mein ranga' (dyed in your colour) is the classic Sufi metaphor of fana (self-annihilation in the beloved), here used in a folk register rather than a mystical one. The poem is grounded and sensory rather than abstract.

Satinder Sartaaj's inclusion in a mainstream Bollywood soundtrack was itself news — the singer-poet, who completed a PhD in Punjabi at Punjabi University Patiala, rarely takes film assignments. He revealed in an interview that the song's Punjabi folk sensibility and the 1965 Punjab backdrop made it personally meaningful.

The song highlighted Satinder Sartaaj's crossover appeal and Zahrah S. Khan's durability as a Bollywood voice since her 2015 debut. It also showcased Shloke Lal, a younger lyricist whose work on films like Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 (2024) had begun to attract critical notice.