Her timbre is amazing, style strikingly attractive, and to top it all, she is a singer-songwriter, a breed that one tends to sometimes feel is on its way out in Oxom. And then comes someone called Deepsikha Chaliha with a song called ‘Nodi’, and the melody she has set it to.

This one’s from the heart, one can imagine it being written and strummed with a guitar, tossed aside for a few hours and over some time chiselled to a certain well thought out, very personal, perfection. The lyrics are rather simple:  ‘Nodi hoi maya xano toi, bukuwedi… Gopone gopone tirbirai thokai dhoubore… Door akaxeo kotha koi, xuworoni bhora obhimaan… Morom hoi gusi jawo toi bukuwedi…’ No fancy–and all so often laboured–last word rhymes, but a composition where the brilliant singing, the minimalist music, semi-accoustic and light electric guitar riffs a lot of the time, but well thought out, hold the song beautifully together.

Interspered with a time click, that somehow after a point becomes an integral part of the composition, the song comes with an animated video of a girl looking into a river, with falling leaves and what seem like fireflies floating past her. No jazzing up of any sort, just a personal statement of a composition in time, with golden cloud ripples in the river and the floating leaves and fireflies just about the only movement in the entire visual.

Nodi is a song you come across on  social media, quiet and unassuming. And then you give it a listen and, enticed, patiently wait for the titles at the end, pause the video and read the names of the people who put it all together. And then you cursor the song back to the beginning and listen to it all over again. This one’s a gem.