इश्क़ है

Ishq Hai (इश्क़ है) is the standout love anthem from the soundtrack of Netflix's Mismatched Season 3 (2024), composed by Anurag Saikia and written by lyricist Raj Shekhar, who sing it alongside a five-strong vocal ensemble of Anurag Saikia, Romy, Amarabha Banerjee, Varun Jain and Madhubanti Bagchi. Released with the third season of the coming-of-age series that premiered on Netflix on 13 December 2024 — its official music video dropping on the Ishtar Music channel on 4 December 2024 — the track reframes the timeless architecture of classical Sufi Qawwali inside a contemporary soundscape, building on the idea that love has the power to brighten a gloomy world. It became one of the most-loved musical moments of the season, crossing 90 million YouTube views, and earned a place on India TV's year-ender list of the 10 best Hindi songs of 2024 — a rare editorial nod for a non-film, streaming-series track.

Composer Anurag Saikia builds Ishq Hai on the timeless scaffolding of classical Sufi Qawwali — call-and-response vocal lines, a harmonium-and-tabla pulse and communal handclaps — and threads it through a contemporary soundscape of strings, synth textures and programmed rhythm, so the devotional form and modern production sit inside one another rather than side by side. The five-voice ensemble (Saikia himself with Romy, Amarabha Banerjee, Varun Jain and Madhubanti Bagchi) lets the melody pass between male and female timbres in the manner of a qawwali party, its layered, building refrain designed to swell rather than simply repeat. The result is a track that reads as both ancient and new — the point Saikia's arrangement makes explicit.

Raj Shekhar's lyric takes a single, generous idea — that love is what redeems an otherwise bleak existence — and states it almost as an argument: 'dekho to kya hi baat hai, kambakht is jahaan mein / ye ishq hai jisne ise rehne ke qaabil kar diya' (look at the strange wonder of it, in this wretched world — it is love that has made it worth living in). The word 'ishq', doing double duty as romantic and Sufi-spiritual love, is the axis the whole song turns on, while 'kambakht' lends the verse a colloquial, lived-in warmth rather than a scriptural distance. It is the poetics of Qawwali retooled for a young streaming audience: exalted in feeling, plain-spoken in phrasing.

Mismatched is a Netflix coming-of-age romantic drama led by Rohit Saraf and Prajakta Koli; its third season premiered on 13 December 2024. Ishq Hai arrives as the season's emotional centrepiece — set up in the Season 3 trailer, where its soulful strains score a mosaic of the show's romantic and coming-of-age beats. The official music video, released on the Ishtar Music channel on 4 December 2024, weaves together the series' ensemble — Rohit Saraf, Prajakta Koli, Taaruk Raina, Muskkaan Jaferi, Rannvijay Singha and others — so the song functions as both a standalone love anthem and a montage of the season's entangled relationships. Composer Anurag Saikia and lyricist Raj Shekhar had already defined the sound of the franchise with earlier hits like 'Aise Kyun' from Season 2, and Ishq Hai extends that partnership into an overtly Qawwali register.

For a track from a streaming series rather than a feature film, Ishq Hai punched well above its weight in 2024: its official music video crossed 90 million YouTube views, and India TV named it among the 10 best Hindi songs of 2024 in its year-ender — placing a non-film, web-series song alongside big-ticket film soundtracks. Its afterlife also included an international reimagining, 'Ishq Hai (This Is Love)', which paired the original vocalists with Dutch trance icon Armin van Buuren and British R&B star Craig David — an unusual crossover that folded a Hindi Sufi-Qawwali into a global electronic frame. Together, the two versions marked Ishq Hai as one of the clearest recent examples of a Netflix-series soundtrack breaking out into the wider Hindi pop mainstream.