वक़्त के जंगल

Waqt Ke Jungle (वक़्त के जंगल) is a key track from Dobaaraa (2022), Anurag Kashyap's supernatural thriller starring Taapsee Pannu, produced by Ellipsis Entertainment and Saregama with music by Gaurav Chatterji and lyrics by Hussain Haidry. Sung by Armaan Malik, the song marked a rare genre departure for the singer, who described stepping into a moodier, more atmospheric register than his usual romantic-pop catalogue. Released around the film's 19 August 2022 theatrical date, the song's central image — being lost in a 'jungle of time' — directly echoes the film's premise of a woman who begins communicating through a broken TV set with a boy from a different point in time, following a fatal car accident.

Gaurav Chatterji builds Waqt Ke Jungle around a slow, atmospheric arrangement that leans into restraint rather than hooks — a deliberate contrast to the mainstream pop sensibility Armaan Malik is best known for. In interviews around the release, Malik spoke of the track as a genre he 'hasn't sung in Bollywood' before, suggesting the composer pushed him toward a moodier, more textured vocal delivery suited to the film's unsettling, time-bending tone.

Hussain Haidry's lyric centers on the image of a banjaara (wanderer) lost within 'waqt ke jungle' — the jungle of time — collapsing the ideas of temporal disorientation and physical wandering into a single metaphor. The repetition of the opening lines functions almost like an incantation, mirroring the film's own loop-like structure where past and present bleed into each other.

Dobaaraa follows Antara (Taapsee Pannu), who moves into a house with her husband and, after witnessing a fatal accident, discovers she can communicate through an old TV set with Anay, a boy living in the same house 25 years in the past — a race to change the past to prevent a tragedy. Directed by Anurag Kashyap and produced by Ektaa Kapoor and Sunir Kheterpal's Ellipsis Entertainment with Zee Studios and Echelon Productions, the film is a remake of the Spanish thriller Mirage. It released theatrically on 19 August 2022. Waqt Ke Jungle, alongside 'Veham,' forms part of the film's mood-driven soundtrack that leans into the story's unsettling, temporally-disjointed atmosphere rather than conventional romantic filler.

Waqt Ke Jungle did not become a mainstream chart hit — Dobaaraa itself underperformed commercially — but the song is notable within Armaan Malik's discography as a documented stylistic departure, discussed by the singer himself in press interviews as a genre he had not previously explored in his Bollywood work.