पहली दफ़ा

Pehli Dafaa (पहली दफ़ा) is among the Gulzar-penned poem-clips released to promote 8 A.M. Metro (2023), issued by Sony Music India on 1 June 2023 ahead of the film's 19 May 2023 theatrical release. Written by Gulzar with music by Mark K. Robin, the roughly 77-second piece is narrated on-screen by Saiyami Kher, continuing the film's device of voicing its characters' inner lives through recited poetry rather than sung playback numbers. The poem recalls a first meeting rendered through unsettling, dreamlike imagery — an ankle gripped by what might have been fear or a black serpent — before shifting into reassurance and a strange dissolving of the self ('meri saans meri laut aayi'/'mujhe kandha diya, sar tekne ko'), evoking the disorienting intensity of an encounter that changes everything, mirroring the connection at the heart of Iravati and Preetam's relationship in the film.

Mark K. Robin scores Pehli Dafaa with the same restrained, atmospheric approach used across the film's Gulzar poem-clips — a quiet instrumental bed that recedes behind Saiyami Kher's spoken delivery rather than asserting its own melody, letting the poem's rhythm and pauses carry the piece over its roughly 77-second runtime.

Gulzar's nazm captures the vertigo of a first meeting through startling, almost surreal imagery — an unnamed fear or a black serpent gripping the ankles, followed by a hand offered, a shoulder to rest one's head on, and finally the disorienting sensation of one's own footsteps sounding unfamiliar afterward. It is a poem about how a single encounter can destabilise and then remake a sense of self, using fear and comfort as two faces of the same overwhelming feeling — a technique typical of Gulzar's late-career economy of image over explicit statement.

8 A.M. Metro, written and directed by Raj Rachakonda, follows Iravati (Saiyami Kher), an anxious housewife, and Preetam (Gulshan Devaiah), a banker, whose chance meeting on a metro commute between Nanded and Hyderabad develops into an unlikely bond. Gulzar's poetry, recited across several interludes, serves as the film's internal-monologue device, and Pehli Dafaa's imagery of a disorienting, transformative first encounter directly mirrors the film's central relationship. The film released theatrically on 19 May 2023 to positive critical response for its literary, restrained storytelling.

As a short promotional poem-clip, Pehli Dafaa did not chart commercially, but it drew a comparatively larger YouTube audience among the film's poem suite — tens of thousands of views across its official uploads — and is frequently cited alongside Khauf and Nazmein in critical discussions of 8 A.M. Metro's distinctive use of Gulzar's poetry as a narrative device.