'Chashni' vs 'Hook Up': Which is the better song?
On Wednesday, 1 May 2019, two songs from two much-awaited films dropped almost at the same time. On the one hand, we have Tiger Shroff and Alia Bhatt for the first time in Hook Up from Student Of The Year 2 (SOTY2) — on the other, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif reunite in Chashni, the latest song from Bharat.
For those of us who love to plug in our earphones and dive into work, this was a good day — two very different but very catchy songs to listen to on a loop. And visually? Well, they are stunning, both of them, you can't deny that.
Yes, Chashni does make you question if we had Chinese-made LED fairylights in the 1970s when superstar Rajesh Khanna roared at the box office. Or, if midriff-bearing saree and sleeveless blouse-combos with extra-long pallus were a fashion back then — for I distinctly remember short pallus were the rage — case in point Sharmila Tagore in Aradhana.
Or, say, in the case of the Hook Up, who has a pole in the middle of their bedroom to slide down like fire-fighters?
But then, there’s nothing that a little willing suspension of disbelief cannot take care of.
The two songs, however, are essentially two sides of the same coin — they stand for precisely the opposite, yet are very similar.
Chashni has a — for want of a better phrase — done-to-death pairing of Sallu bhai and Katrina.
A much-older man and a much-younger woman — something we’ve seen in Bollywood for decades. Hook Up, on the other has a fresh pair — Tiger and Alia — and though Tiger is older than Alia, in film career terms, Alia is his senior.
And we cannot reiterate that enough, considering Tiger, Tara Sutaria and Ananya Pandey and the second batch, with Alia, Sidharth Malhotra and Varun Dhawan as their alumni.
In concept too, the two songs have two different voices.
If Chashni is about the male gaze — bhaijaan crooning to ‘Bann ja tu meri, Ishqe di chashni’ as he hovers around a preening Katrina, who is clearly enjoying the attention, Hook Up gives Alia some agency when she says, “Le le le lele number mera, Baad mein message mujhko kar dena, Khudko samajh ke lucky, Mujhse hook up tu kar le na.”
Yet, both songs are about attraction — between a man and a woman. At least in the second one, the woman has the scope to voice her attraction (love, lust, whatever you want to call it), unlike the former.
Similarly, if Katrina becomes the object of attention in Chashni, Tiger and Alia are both objects in Hook Up. A fair balance, don't you think?