परी

Pari (परी) is the love anthem of Anurag Kashyap's time-bending thriller Dobaaraa (2022), composed by Gaurav Chatterji with lyrics by Hussain Haidry and sung by Neeti Mohan. Released by Saregama on 18 August 2022, a day ahead of the film's theatrical release, the song was described by its makers as a 'nostalgic' composition capturing 'the beauty of being hopeful' in love — built on live acoustic and electric guitars, nylon guitar, ronroco and strings recorded in Israel, giving it a warmer, more organic texture than the album's more electronic tracks. Picturized on Taapsee Pannu, the song's official video crossed over six million YouTube views, making it the most-watched track from the Dobaaraa soundtrack by a wide margin, even as the film itself underperformed commercially.

Gaurav Chatterji built Pari around live instrumentation rather than programmed electronics — acoustic and electric guitars from Hrishi Giridhar, nylon and acoustic guitar from Ashish Zachariah, ronroco (an Andean charango-family instrument) from Tapas Roy, bass from Sajal Sharma, and strings recorded separately in Israel — layered under Neeti Mohan's lead vocal with Chatterji himself providing backing vocals. The arrangement leans warm and organic, distinguishing it from Dobaaraa's more electronic Dariya Hai and giving the melody room to breathe as a classic film ballad.

Hussain Haidry's lyric builds on the classic Hindi-Urdu image of the beloved as a pari (fairy) — a being too perfect and ephemeral for waking life. The opening couplet 'khwaab mein thi jo pari, neend tooti to kho gayi' (the fairy who was in my dream, vanished the moment sleep broke) sets up the song's core tension between the safety of remembered or imagined love and the harder reality of loss, a theme that mirrors Dobaaraa's own narrative of characters reaching across time for something that may not survive the waking world.

Dobaaraa, directed by Anurag Kashyap and led by Taapsee Pannu, Pavail Gulati and Rahul Bhat, is a Hindi remake of the Spanish thriller Mirage about a woman who communicates through a television set during a thunderstorm with a boy living 25 years in the past. Pari, picturized on Pannu, was released a day before the film's 19 August 2022 theatrical opening as its emotional centerpiece single — a promotional strategy meant to establish the film's romantic undertone ahead of its more plot-twist-driven marketing. The film premiered at the London Indian Film Festival on 23 June 2022 before its India release, produced under Anurag Kashyap Films with Kalpataru Films and Zee Studios.

Pari became the standout track of the Dobaaraa soundtrack commercially, with its official Saregama video crossing over six million YouTube views — far outstripping the album's other songs including Dariya Hai and the reprise version. A stripped-down 'LoFi' version was also released by Saregama, extending the song's life across playlist formats even as the parent film's theatrical run fell short of expectations.