चाय पकोड़ा

Chai Pakoda is one of two original songs composed for Bhagwan Bharose (2023), the directorial debut of Shiladitya Bora, by the veteran Hindi fusion-rock band Indian Ocean — with all four members (Amit Kilam, Himanshu Joshi, Nikhil Rao, Rahul Ram) credited as composers, and Kilam, Joshi and Ram sharing lead vocals. Lyrics are by Sanjeev Sharma. The film, written by Sudhakar Nilmani 'Eklavya' with Eklavya and Mohit Chauhan co-writing screenplay and dialogue, follows two young boys, Bhola and Shambhu, whose ideas about faith are tested as India's socio-political landscape shifts around them — produced by Prasanna Vithanage with Platoon One Films and premiered at the 25th UK Asian Film Festival in May 2023, where it won the Flame Award for Best Film, before a limited theatrical release on 13 October 2023. Chai Pakoda's full video, released on the Rhythm Boyz Entertainment YouTube channel the same day, carries Indian Ocean's signature folk-rock instrumentation into the film's small-town setting, using the song's title image — tea and fritters, catalogued elsewhere under the variant title 'Jhoothe Chai Pakode' — as a vehicle for gentle social satire.

Indian Ocean bring their trademark folk-rock instrumentation — layered guitar, live drums, Rahul Ram's bass, and hand percussion — to Chai Pakoda, recorded at Charmwood Lake Studios and Baa Baa Black Sheep Records. Rather than fronting the track with a single playback voice, the band spreads lead vocal duties across three members (Kilam, Joshi, Ram), giving the song a loose, communal, campfire-band energy consistent with the group's decades-long identity as a live fusion act rather than a conventional film-song outfit.

Sanjeev Sharma's lyric leans on the everyday image of chai and pakode — India's default vocabulary for small comfort and idle conversation — and, per the song's alternate catalogue title 'Jhoothe Chai Pakode' (False Tea and Fritters), turns that comfort into a quietly satirical frame, in keeping with the film's larger interest in how childhood faith gets complicated by an adult world of pretence and shifting truths.

Bhagwan Bharose follows Bhola (Satendra Soni) and Shambhu (Sparsh Suman), two boys in a small Indian town whose understanding of faith, family and truth is reshaped as the country's socio-political landscape shifts around them — with Vinay Pathak, Masumeh Makhija and Shrikant Verma in supporting roles. Framed by director Shiladitya Bora as 'a story of lost childhood,' the film premiered at the 25th UK Asian Film Festival in May 2023, winning the Flame Award for Best Film, was selected as the closing film of Sri Lanka's 9th Jaffna International Cinema Festival, and released theatrically in India on 13 October 2023, with Chai Pakoda's full video dropping the same day on Rhythm Boyz Entertainment's YouTube channel.

As a song from a small, festival-circuit debut feature rather than a mainstream commercial release, Chai Pakoda's reach has been modest — its official YouTube video has drawn roughly a quarter-million views — but it carries the pedigree of Indian Ocean, one of India's most respected fusion-rock acts, scoring their first full narrative feature soundtrack in this register, alongside the film's own critical recognition (the UK Asian Film Festival's Flame Award for Best Film) which brought attention to its music.