An Open Letter To Arijit Singh: Accha Chalta Hoon ... Will Hit Differently Now

Dear

Arijit Singh, I first heard you on a languid winter afternoon, sitting alone on the rooftop of our century-old home, while the world slept off the exhaustion of Saraswati Puja. The wilting flowers and silent prayers felt suspended between devotion and desire. It was the day after Valentine’s Day, and I was nursing an embarrassingly and terribly private heartbreak. Suddenly, your terribly raspy and melodiously beautiful Bojhena Shey Bojhena floated through the air - unhurried, impossibly intimate, and it seemed the song understood me. In that moment, something shifted inside. A lovestruck soul suddenly recognised another’s language of longing.

Long before the nation had crowned you Bollywood’s heartbreak laureate, you had already slipped into the veins of Bengali youngsters like us. Your love-sick croonings were our secret companion - played on cracked earphones, whispered in hostel corridors, shared between shy confessions and quiet disappointments. We were hooked, helplessly so.And yesterday, you said you’re “calling it off”. For a moment, time stood still for me, and I am sure it felt like the country collectively paused as well. Someone (You) had turned down the volume on a decade of feelings. For 13 years now, your voice was not something we just hear, it was something we carried. In headphones we slipped on during impossibly boring days, in late-night cab rides our tired bodies took after long office-hours, in empty solitary rooftop rooms after heartbreaks and in moments when words died, but music did not. You have woven yourself into our emotional lives.

And now, when I will hear Accha chalta hoon, duaon mein yaad rakhna, I know it will hit differently.There was a time, when this was the line we played after breakups, when love slipped through our fingers like sands inside clasped palms and we tried to sound brave, so brave, despite not feeling it. Your message, despite all your promises, felt like a goodbye - to an entire generation that grew up with your voice as the emotional charging point that kept us running, and running, running. Your message was crisp, clear. Much like the Taurus you are, you were grounded, practical in your statement, but sometimes, a farewell feels so much heavier, because it’s real.I keep on thinking how your other songs will sound now - how will they carry a new weight, a new ache. Perhaps Aashiqui 2’s Tum Hi Ho will no longer be just an anthem of obsessive love and the trembling declaration of devotion will now echo with nostalgia. Agar Tum Saath Ho from Tamasha will hurt in a new way. It was always about separation and now it will sound like a conversation between us and you -us asking you to stay, and you choosing a different path. Channa Mereya from Ae Dil Hai Mushkil was our anthem for unrequited love, but now, it will feel like an elegy to an era.

And finally Raabta - that haunting line about soul connections - will feel almost prophetic. Because your voice became our raabta to a certain phase of life - youth, first heartbreaks, messy adulthood, and quiet resilience. Perhaps, long after trends change, your songs will be the thread that connects who we were to who we become.Your voice was my constant companion - your music, deeply personal. I remember walking the empty streets of South Bombay, with Phir Le Aaya Dil in my ears, feeling a fresh heartbreak soften into poetry. I remember a road trip where Gerua played on loop and nobody complained. I remember late nights, deadlines, loneliness and comfort – and your voice as my constant. You were there when others were not.

Yes, we will survive. Perhaps new voices will come and new melodies will trend. Yes, we will have new heartbreaks and those new breakups will find new anthems. But there will always be those two eras - before Arijit and after Arijit. And in the quiet you leave behind, your songs, silences and melodies will feel louder, deeper and more intimate. Accha chalta hoon, Arijit. Duaon mein yaad rakhenge.Not just as a singer, but as the sound of a generation’s feelings.Regards,A Fan