पग विच राखी दा

Pagg Vich Raakhi Da is the companion piece to 'Naseeba' on the Black Warrant (2025) Netflix soundtrack — composed by Ajay Jayanthi with lyrics by Anvita Dutt and sung by Devenderpal Singh. The title deploys a Punjabi cultural idiom of profound weight: 'pagg' (turban) is the locus of a Sikh or Punjabi man's honour; 'raakhi da' (kept/placed within) describes a sacred vow held close to the self. For a series set in Tihar Prison in the 1980s — where many inmates and officers were of Punjabi origin — this idiom cuts to the series' central moral question: what promises did these men make to themselves, and which did they break?

Ajay Jayanthi introduces sarangi into the arrangement of Pagg Vich Raakhi Da — an instrument with deep classical-folk resonance in north Indian music, its bowed strings capable of producing the kind of cry that Punjabi poets have long associated with grief. The tumbi carries the rhythmic ground; sarangi provides the ache. Together they create a sonic texture closer to a traditional Punjabi lok geet (folk song) than any contemporary OTT soundtrack piece, which is precisely the point: the song reaches backward into cultural memory to contextualise the series' historical setting.

Anvita Dutt uses the turban-as-covenant metaphor with precision: in Punjabi culture, to place something 'pagg vich' is to sanctify it, to guard it with one's honour. A jailer who had placed something sacred in his metaphorical turban — his code of conduct, his integrity — and then watched it compromised by Tihar's institutional corruption is the song's emotional subject, though no specific character is named.

Pagg Vich Raakhi Da was released as a digital single on the same day as Naseeba (15 February 2025). Devenderpal Singh's association with Punjabi classical vocal forms gave both songs a textural authenticity unusual in OTT series music, which typically defaults to contemporary production styles. Anvita Dutt's decision to write in Punjabi rather than Hindi for both tracks reflects her commitment to matching the sonic register to the cultural reality of the characters.

Pagg Vich Raakhi Da became the more critically discussed of the two Black Warrant songs — its turban-covenant imagery generating commentary in music criticism circles about the specificity of cultural metaphor in OTT soundtracks versus the generic emotional vocabulary typical of streaming original music.