जुगनू

Jugnu (जुगनू) is a reflective, folk-inflected track from Shastry Viruddh Shastry (2023), Nandita Roy and Shiboprosad Mukherjee's Hindi debut remake of their Bengali film Posto. The song is a Hindi adaptation of 'Raat Jaga Tara,' a well-known composition by the Bengali band Chandrabindoo, reworked here with Hindi lyrics written and sung by veteran lyricist-actor Swanand Kirkire alongside Chandrabindoo member and composer Anindya Chatterjee, who also handles the music direction. Released by Zee Music Company as part of the film's six-track soundtrack, Jugnu carries a wistful, poetic register distinct from the film's lighter numbers Natkhattu and Dil Kare Badmashiyan, using the firefly (jugnu) as a metaphor for fleeting brightness — fitting for a story centred on a family confronting loss, memory, and generational change.

Anindya Chatterjee, a founding member of the Bengali band Chandrabindoo, carries over the melodic core of the original 'Raat Jaga Tara' into Jugnu, retaining its folk-acoustic character while adapting it for a Hindi-language playback context. He co-sings the track with Swanand Kirkire, whose distinctive, unpolished vocal style — long associated with his lyricist-turned-singer work in films like 3 Idiots and Lage Raho Munna Bhai — gives the song an intimate, conversational quality rather than a polished studio-pop finish.

Swanand Kirkire's Hindi lyrics preserve the original song's central image — the firefly (jugnu) that burns briefly and brightly before fading into the dark — turning it into a meditation on impermanence and the value of small, fleeting moments of light, a theme that resonates with the film's story of a family reckoning with change and loss.

Shastry Viruddh Shastry, released theatrically on 3 November 2023, stars Paresh Rawal and Neena Kulkarni as grandparents in a custody-style dispute over their grandchild with their son's family, played by Shiv Panditt and Mimi Chakraborty. It is director duo Nandita Roy and Shiboprosad Mukherjee's Hindi remake of their own 2017 Bengali film Posto. Jugnu's reflective tone situates it among the film's more emotionally weighted moments, drawing on the same Bengali cinematic sensibility — via composer Anindya Chatterjee — that shaped the original film.

As an adaptation of Chandrabindoo's well-regarded Bengali original 'Raat Jaga Tara,' Jugnu carries a built-in cultural resonance for Bengali audiences familiar with the source song, even as it has not generated major independent chart activity in its Hindi form. It stands as a notable cross-language credit bringing Swanand Kirkire's writing and Anindya Chatterjee's composing together on a single track.