दिल

Dil (दिल) is one of the romantic centerpieces of Ek Villain Returns (2022), composed by the duo Kaushik-Guddu with lyrics by Kunaal Vermaa, and released by T-Series in two parallel renditions — a male version sung by Raghav Chaitanya, used as the 'Full Video' picturized on the film's cast (John Abraham, Disha Patani, Arjun Kapoor, Tara Sutaria), and a female version sung by Shreya Ghoshal presented as a lyrical video. This dual-gender release pattern, common in contemporary Bollywood soundtracks, let the film's music team offer two distinct emotional colourings of the same composition to streaming and YouTube audiences. Released around the film's 29 July 2022 theatrical debut, Dil added a straightforward romantic counterpoint to the album's darker, more intense tracks like Shaamat and Aankh Marey-style numbers, giving the soundtrack emotional range beyond its thriller premise.

Kaushik-Guddu craft Dil as a melodically simple, piano-and-strings-led romantic ballad built to carry two vocal treatments equally well — Raghav Chaitanya's version leans into a warmer, more grounded male timbre for the film's picturized full video, while Shreya Ghoshal's rendition, presented as a standalone lyrical track, brings her signature classically-trained clarity and emotional restraint to the same melody, giving the composition a noticeably different texture despite identical instrumentation and structure.

Kunaal Vermaa's lyrics center on the simple, direct declaration that the heart itself recognises its destined love ('tu hi to meri manzil hai' — you are my destination), avoiding the metaphor-heavy density of some of the soundtrack's other tracks in favour of an accessible, hummable romantic vocabulary suited to a wedding-adjacent, tender picturization.

Ek Villain Returns, Mohit Suri's 2022 spiritual sequel to Ek Villain (2014), interweaves two love-and-revenge storylines featuring John Abraham-Disha Patani and Arjun Kapoor-Tara Sutaria. Dil's full-video picturization draws on the film's romantic threads, using the song to establish tender connection between its central pairs before the narrative turns toward obsession and violence — a structural device common in Mohit Suri's musical thrillers, where a soft romantic number sets up the emotional stakes for later darker turns.

Both versions of Dil found solid traction on YouTube in the tens of millions of views within their first years, contributing to Ek Villain Returns' soundtrack performing respectably despite the film's mixed critical reception — the dual-version release strategy itself became a talking point among fans comparing Raghav Chaitanya's and Shreya Ghoshal's interpretations of the same melody.