ख़ौफ़

Khauf (ख़ौफ़) is one of several short Gulzar poem-pieces woven through 8 A.M. Metro (2023), Raj Rachakonda's Hindi drama starring Gulshan Devaiah and Saiyami Kher, with music by Mark K. Robin. Rather than a conventional playback song, Khauf is a 26-second recited nazm — written by Gulzar and narrated on-screen by Saiyami Kher's character — released as part of the film's promotional rollout by Sony Music India on 4 June 2023, ahead of the film's 19 May 2023 theatrical release window. The poem imagines fear as a physical presence lodged inside the mind, with claw-like imagery of something that 'stabs the throat' — a mood piece consistent with the film's portrayal of a woman working through anxiety and panic attacks. It sits alongside companion poem-tracks Nazmein, Pehli Dafaa, Akele Toh Nahi Ho, and Son Machchri as part of the same Gulzar-penned poetry suite that runs through the film.

Composer Mark K. Robin scores Khauf as a minimal, atmospheric bed under the recitation rather than a conventional melody — the film's poem-interludes are built to foreground Gulzar's words and the actor's spoken delivery, with Saiyami Kher's restrained, unhurried narration doing the emotional work rather than a sung melodic line. This spoken-word treatment is consistent with Robin's approach across the film's several Gulzar poem-tracks, which function as tonal punctuation between the fuller playback songs like Ghoomey and Phir Se Dil Toota.

Gulzar's short nazm works through his characteristic technique of turning an abstraction — fear — into a concrete, almost violent physical image: darkness lodged in the mind grows claws ('naakhun nikal aate hain') that stab into the throat. The poem's brevity and its unanswered questions ('kab aaye? na jaane kab?' — when does it come? who knows when?) mirror the unpredictable, intrusive nature of anxiety and panic itself, a theme that runs through the film's portrayal of its female lead.

8 A.M. Metro follows Iravati (Saiyami Kher), a housewife from Nanded who develops panic attacks and forms an unlikely bond with fellow metro commuter Preetam (Gulshan Devaiah) while travelling to Hyderabad to care for her pregnant sister. Written and directed by Raj Rachakonda (credited as Raj R), the film uses Gulzar's poetry — recited by the two leads — as an internal-monologue device threaded between scenes, with Khauf specifically voicing the anxiety and dread underlying Iravati's condition. The film released theatrically on 19 May 2023 to positive critical notice for its restrained, literary tone.

As a short promotional poem-clip rather than a full song, Khauf did not chart, but it forms part of a wider critical appreciation of 8 A.M. Metro's use of Gulzar's poetry as a storytelling device — reviewers repeatedly singled out the film's literary, poem-driven texture as its most distinctive quality. The clip has drawn a modest but steady YouTube audience in the tens of thousands of views on Sony Music India's official channel.