याद

Yaad is a 4:43 ghazal-rooted ballad from Metro... In Dino (2025, T-Series), composed by Pritam and sung by Papon, using poetry by the 19th-century Urdu master Momin Khan Momin (1800–1851). The choice of Momin's verse — typically reserved for classical mehfil and academic ghazal — for a mainstream Bollywood soundtrack represents one of the album's most daring curatorial decisions. Papon, whose voice carries a natural earthen quality, brings Momin's 200-year-old ache into the present urban landscape of the film.

Pritam's setting of Momin's ghazal is delicate and respectful of its classical roots without being archaic. The arrangement uses a sparse string bed and piano chords that suggest rather than dominate, giving Papon's voice room to carry the full weight of the poetry. Papon's approach — rooted in Assamese folk and Hindustani classical — gives the song an earthy authenticity that suits a poet who prized emotional directness over ornament. The song builds across its 4:43 length with slow inevitability.

Momin Khan Momin was one of the great Urdu ghazal poets of the 19th century, a contemporary of Ghalib who Ghalib himself acknowledged with admiration. Momin's verse is known for its intimacy and direct emotional address — the beloved is spoken to, not about. His couplets on memory have a peculiar quality: they make forgetting seem impossible and remembering seem like the only form of living.

The decision to use Momin's poetry was consistent with Anurag Basu's approach to the soundtrack — multiple tracks draw on classical Urdu poetry (Ghalib appears in Hote Tak) rather than commissioning entirely new verse. This roots the contemporary love stories in a much longer tradition of subcontinental longing.

Yaad's use of Momin Khan Momin marks an important moment in contemporary Bollywood music — when a 200-year-old ghazal master's verse finds its way into a 2025 Netflix-streaming romantic drama and reaches a generation of listeners who may never have encountered Momin otherwise.