Chithi, Khat Aur Tum, is a song about penning down one’s emotions when one loses the candidness to say it out loud. In Aanchal Shrivastava’s narrative, she reaches a stage of her relationship when all emotions tend to go numb. As the lovers probably meet for the last time, she has a lot to say but fails at doing so.
Heartbreak is a theme explored by several acoustic-sounding artists in the independent scene, but it’s interesting to see when some tend to use different allegories rather than the generic talk on the abstract concepts of love and the loss of love.
The music video too conveys this feeling of emptiness as the two lead characters seem to be falling out of love, and write letters to get honest with each other. Occasionally, either guitarist Aditya Ashwath (who’s also behind the track’s production) or Ghatam and Kanjira player Shabrish Garg bridge the gap as the lovers sit at a distance from each other on a seashore.
The song is mellow from start to finish but doesn’t get monotonous, with Shrivastava’s vocals aptly conveying a feeling of longingness. The hook’s lyrics especially have a poetic feel to them, that’s, of course, elevated with the singer-songwriter’s voice. She croons, ‘chithi, khat aur tum, teeno hi nahi aatey’. This can roughly be translated to, ‘you and the letters, none of them seem to be arriving’.
It’s hard to say whether the song can be catchy, but just looking at it from an artistic perspective, it’s an interesting take on the distance that might have affected several bonds especially in a time like this lockdown season.
Verdict: A gentle, mellow track on feeling distant from a loved one.
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