After Twenty-Five Years Of Writing For Film, Television, And Streaming, Lyricist Vaibhav Modi Goes Back To The Ghazal With Teri Adaa.

Lyricist Vaibhav Modi in conversation with Papon at the intimate living room mehfil for Teri Adaa, the first ghazal from the Sar-e-Shaam sessions

In an exclusive conversation with SpotboyE, lyricist, poet and storyteller Vaibhav Modi opens up about Teri Adaa, the first ghazal from Sar-e-Shaam, and what it means to return to the form where he began.

Over more than two decades, Vaibhav Modi has written across films, television, and streaming, creating and writing shows such as Times of Music and Mukhbir: The Story of a Spy, and adapting global formats including MasterChef and Survivor for Indian audiences. Through all of it, the poet never stopped writing.

Q1. Teri Adaa began with a chance conversation in an elevator with Papon more than a decade ago. Take us back to that first meeting and how it turned into Sar-e-Shaam.

Some partnerships are made in studios. Ours was made in an elevator. It was 2012, and I was at a recording for a song I had written for a friend's telefilm. Papon and I happened to be leaving at the same time, and the conversation that began in that lift carried on long enough for us to exchange numbers. What followed was not a plan; it was a habit. We began jamming, and out of that came Khumaar and Tauba for his Coke Studio India episode in 2013. Over the years, we became neighbours; we kept creating right through the lockdown, and somewhere in the middle of all those evenings, the idea of an album of ghazals took shape. Papon has emerged as an important voice on the ghazal scene, and it felt like the right time for Sar-e-Shaam to come out.

Q2. Ghazals are where you began as a poet, long before the screen found you. What does it mean to step back into the form after twenty-five years of writing for film, television and streaming?

Honestly, it feels less like stepping back and more like being found out. Poetry found me long before screenwriting and producing did. I grew up in a small town in Rajasthan with parents who worked with All India Radio, so there was always music, and there were always books, and I have read and written ghazals since my formative years. Everything that came later- the shows, the formats, the series- happened around that, not instead of it. The ghazal was even present inside my screen work. I wrote Humse Toh Woh Behtar and Dil Behel Jaaye for Mukhbir: The Story of a Spy. This is simply the part of me that was always writing, finally standing in front of the rest of the work rather than behind it.

Q3. Teri Adaa deliberately walks away from the ghazal's familiar landscape of heartbreak and lament and chooses playfulness instead. Why did the form need that shift, and how difficult is it to write mischief into a classical structure?

Because love is not only sorrow, and the ghazal has always known that. With Teri Adaa, Papon and I wanted to capture the mischief between two people instead. The teasing, the little battles of wit, the beautiful unpredictability of the beloved. As for difficulty, playfulness is genuinely harder to write than grief. Sorrow forgives a heavy hand; wit does not. In a couplet you have two lines to set something up and turn it, and if the turn arrives a syllable late, the magic dies. Another reason to give playfulness a shot was to make it appealing to a younger audience.

Q4. The album has been six to seven years in the making, shaped over countless evenings of jamming. What changed in Teri Adaa across those years, and what survived from the very first draft?

What survived is the beauty of contradiction. From the first evening, we knew we wanted to play on the conflicting signals between lovers, and what changed was how much we wanted to bring it back to classic love. One of the couplets that we did not use in the ghazal goes:

“Waise toh maine pehle bhi chup chup saussko dekha hai… woh dooriyaan kucch aur thhi, yeh faasla kucch aur hai.”

We decided not to keep it because while everything is technically in the realm of a classic ghazal, it does not quite carry the attitude we wanted Teri Adaa to have.

Q5. Your earlier songs for Papon, Khumaar and Tauba from Coke Studio still live in people's playlists more than a decade later. How did that history shape the trust between the two of you on this track?

That history is the whole foundation. Khumaar and Tauba worked the way they did because a lot of elements aligned beautifully, almost as though the songs had been designed before we got to the first word and the first note. There was a certain surrender between the poem and the melody, and between the artists too. Papon has been one of my important influences as well as a collaborator. He engages with poetry the way a poet does, and invites me to engage with music the way a musician would. The bedrock of this collaboration is a confidence that when it feels right to both of us, it creates a tug at the heart of the listener.

Q6. The song is staged as an intimate living room mehfil. Why was that format important to you both, and what does a mehfil give a ghazal that a polished studio video cannot?

A mehfil gives the ghazal two things a polished studio cannot. First, room to breathe. Every note is allowed its own time and nobody is rushing to a hook. Second, proximity. In a mehfil, you can see the listener react to a couplet in real time, and the singer responds to that reaction. The song becomes a conversation rather than a broadcast. Teri Adaa was staged as an intimate living room mehfil, with close friends from music, art, films and publishing, for precisely that reason. Shweta Mishra Mahanta, Papon's better half and a great friend to us, designed and produced the evening with a warmth that can only happen in a living room filled with people you love.

Q7. Do you remember the first time you heard Papon sing these words? Did it match the ghazal you had been carrying in your head?

Unlike most of my ghazals, Teri Adaa did not come to me on its own. It happened because Papon wanted it. A late-night session and some jamming around a particular feel brought the words to me. A rough melody already existed with its own temperament, and I chose the whole idea of mischievous contradictions.

Q8. A young audience is discovering Urdu poetry all over again. What would you say to a listener meeting the ghazal for the first time through Teri Adaa?

The old wisdom about a good couplet is to capture a unique emotion with such simplicity that the listener feels, I could have said that. My word to the younger generation meeting the ghazal through Teri Adaa would be to find themselves in the poem and let the melody wash over them. That is the beauty of a ghazal. It makes you feel as if a piece of your existence has been plucked out and set to a tune. On a literal level, the ghazal is a format that comes with rules but is the most adaptable form of poetry. It dances equally well with a semi-classical melody and a modern arrangement. Teri Adaa could be a great initiation for those who have not engaged with this form of music and poetry. Our attempt through Sar-e-Shaam is simply to make that doorway easier to find, and never to gatekeep it.

Q9. Sar-e-Shaam has more ghazals waiting. Without giving too much away, what should listeners expect as this chapter unfolds?

Two more ghazals from Sar-e-Shaam are set to release in the months ahead, so Teri Adaa is only the opening of the mehfil. I would rather let them arrive on their own terms than describe them in advance, but I can say this much. They come from the same set of evenings and the same intent, to keep the form intact while widening what it is allowed to feel. Beyond that, I am writing. I always am. The rest can wait until there is something real to share.

About Vaibhav Modi

Vaibhav Modi is a Mumbai-based lyricist, poet and storyteller whose words have travelled across film, television, streaming and independent music for over twenty-five years.

He grew up in the small towns of Rajasthan, in Kota, Bikaner, Udaipur and Jaipur, where his parents served as executives with All India Radio, giving him a childhood spent among record libraries, books and LPs. He taught himself the Indian bamboo flute as a boy, and music led him to poetry. An environmental science graduate with an MBA from KJ Somaiya Institute of Management, he moved to Mumbai in 1999.

He has created and written shows including Times of Music and Mukhbir: The Story of a Spy, and played pivotal roles in bringing international formats such as MasterChef, Survivor, Wipeout, and Deal or No Deal to Indian television. As a lyricist, his songs span films including Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain, Axone and Drona, series such as Tripling and Fisaddi, and the Coke Studio India classics Khumaar and Tauba.

His work has been recognised with a Screenwriters Association Award in 2023, a Filmfare OTT Award in 2020 and an Asia Academy Creative Award in Singapore in 2020.

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