Musician Anupam Roy has released a new Hindi single, Mehman, two years after his last single, Aisi Raaton. Written, sung and composed by Anupam and conceptualised during the 2020–21 lockdown, Mehman is a love ballad that blends melody and visual storytelling.

Released on YouTube, Mehman certainly resembles Journey Song from Piku but has a different story to tell. An avid fan of graphic art and anime, Anupam presented the song with a visual narration done by Upamanyu Bhattacharyya.

“I have been working in this language (Hindi) for the last seven to eight years. Aisi Raaton did really well on YouTube and music streaming apps. That gave me huge confidence in doing more independent Hindi numbers for the huge audience base across the country,” Anupam told The Telegraph Online.

Mehman weaves together two parallel narratives — one chronicles a couple’s dream of visiting Ladakh and the misfortune of one of them meeting death, while the other traces how an individual picks up the pieces of lost love and embarks on a journey of self-exploration to reach a dream destination that turns out to be real at the end of the road.

“The lyrics tell how sparks fly between two persons after a brief meeting and how the narrator thinks about the other person as a guest — mehman — wondering perhaps this is the time they have been waiting for,” explained Anupam.

The song has begun to strike a chord with music lovers as favourable comments have started pouring in on the YouTube comments section. One admirer commented that the song brought a whiff of the 1990s in 2022 and another described how the melody and the visual narrion had taken her away on flights of imagination.

The singer-songwriter has an English song lined up in November, two Bengali songs in December and a slew of Bengali songs for films through the end of the year.