पनवाड़ी

'Panwadi' — a high-energy ensemble anthem composed by Pritam with lyrics by Jairaj for Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari (Dharma Music, 2025) — features six voices including Bhojpuri superstar Khesari Lal Yadav, Haryanvi folk singer Masoom Sharma, and Nikhita Gandhi, all produced by Meghdeep Bose. Rolling Stone India ranked it #22 in their Top 25 Bollywood Songs of 2025, praising the viral hook step that elevated it into cultural phenomenon. Released September 10, 2025, it brought together a uniquely diverse cast of regional and mainstream voices around Pritam's irresistible folk-pop framework.

Pritam's composition for 'Panwadi' is built on a Bhojpuri-Haryanvi folk rhythm cycle that creates an almost irresistible compulsion to move. Meghdeep Bose's production layers multiple folk percussion traditions — dholak, nagada, manjira — over a contemporary bass and electronic structure, creating a 'mass' sound that works simultaneously in rural and urban contexts. The six-voice cast is not merely additive but thematically significant: the song's polyglot energy mirrors Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari's own argument that India's folk traditions are genuinely pan-regional.

Jairaj's lyric is built around 'panwadi' — a betel-leaf seller — as a figure of both commerce and community gathering. In many parts of North India, the panwari's shop is a social node, a place where gossip and love and local politics converge. The song uses this as an excuse for communal festivity rather than a sustained metaphor.

Pritam's involvement in a Dharma Production is relatively unusual — he is more commonly associated with Dharma's rivals. The connection came through Shashank Khaitan, who specifically wanted Pritam's 'mass folk' touch for 'Panwadi' after Tanishk Bagchi's 'Bijuria' was already locked. The two songs — one a late-90s recreation, the other an original folk-mass number — give the album a double-barrelled folk impact.

'Panwadi' generated one of 2025's most-replicated Bollywood hook-steps — the choreography associated with Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor's sequence was recreated by thousands of Instagram users within days of the song's release. Rolling Stone India's placement at #22 represents critical acknowledgment of a song that first proved its worth through sheer viral energy.