How does the pain of partition sound like? In Imtiaz Ali’s searing romance, Main Vaapas Aaunga, innumerable screams, countless cries, trembling prayers and unkept promises — all get dissolved into a deafening silence as a feeble voice cuts through the numbness, carrying the severity of pain and the affirmation of love. The soft, tender voice, belonging to playback singer Deepali Sahay, pierces through the minimal musicality of A.R. Rahman’s ‘Tere Paas Main’, that has instantly become an earworm, generating varied reactions online within ten days of the film’s release.

The singer reveals how she recorded a version of the song at Rahman’s home studio in Chennai. After that, the song continued to transition as certain words were changed and notes were rearranged. It kept changing till a night before the film’s trailer launch when it was finally decided that the scale of the song was to be modified, demanding a re-recording. Deepali sang the whole song immediately after she got a call from Rahman that evening. “Rahman sir said that I have fifteen minutes and I did it in twenty,” tells Deepali in a conversation with The Hindu.

What exactly was this difference in scale? Deepali demonstrates by singing the opening line on the earlier decided lower scale, which carries the softer touch of a lullaby. The difference is faint but when sung in the higher scale, the pain of the moment is registered more significantly along with the foreboding innocence.

“Rahman sir heard both the versions of the song and he just said that the one with the new scale sounds better. When he says that it sounds better, you better don’t question; you just follow,” quips Deepali.

The song comes at a devastating juncture in the film, when a young Keenu (Vedang Raina) visits the house of his beloved, Afsana (Sharvari Wagh), some years after the partition only to find everything changed. Breaking his promise, he leaves without seeing her and just as she descends the steps to take a look at him, Deepali’s vocals seep in like a gush of cold wind. When she was told about the scene before singing, Deepali couldn’t hold back her tears.

“I am an extremely emotional and imaginative person. I started crying just listening to the story,” says Deepali. Even music comes from a deeply vulnerable space for Deepali, who seems to feel every note of every word when she sings. For instance, her rendition of the melancholic ghazal, ‘Aapki Yaad Aati Rahi Raat Bhar’ (uploaded on the YouTube channel of Urdu Studio), is filled with an ache that instantly registers as something profoundly personal. The intensity reflects even in her singing as her voice breaks midway. Deepali starts crying while trying to continue singing the timeless ghazal.

Over the years, the singer realised that the depth of her lived experiences invariably blended into her singing.

“At 16, I knew love as a concept but at 26, it was also my lived-in experience, which would impact me deeply. So, if I am in pain, I would allow myself to breakdown while singing; I would allow myself to feel the pain. That acceptance has helped me immensely as a singer,” she says.

Deepali has an air of self-awareness around her as she explains her relationship with music. On the outset, she feels that her voice is “heavily gifted”. “My voice is a different entity; it is not me. It has a different personality and character. I am lucky that way,” she says.

Even with her gifted voice, Deepali’s path to be a singer was not streamlined. Her foray into professional singing began when she participated in the third season of the popular singing reality show, Indian Idol. She joined the next season as a host and by the end of it, Deepali’s vocal cord was severely bruised.

“A doctor told me to stop even thinking about singing and that I will never be able to speak if I continued doing riyaaz (practice). As a youngster, it impacted me a lot. It wasn’t fair for the doctor to be so harsh but it managed to successfully keep me away from singing for long,” she recalls.

Feeling dejected that she won’t be able to make a career out of singing, Deepali forayed into acting and started appearing in daily soaps, while also continuing to sing on stage, in order to make a living in Mumbai. It was also her acting stint that made her understand the nuances of direction and she went to study filmmaking at the coveted Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).

Singing was still sidelined and Deepali wasn’t actively doing riyaaz, making her voice shaky and feeble. “It had lost all its charm. The singer in me was gone,” she says.

All of that was to change as when she came out of FTII, Deepali met cinematographer Baba Azmi, who, along with his sister Shabana Azmi, was on the lookout for singers to perform at the yearly celebration of their father, legendary poet Kaifi Azmi’s birth anniversary. When she met Baba, Deepali sang, ‘Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam’, a popular song written by Kaifi Azmi from Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959). Baba was shocked upon hearing her voice.

“He told me that I am wasting my life doing acting and direction. He said, ‘Don’t do this. Please go back to singing’. It was then that I started doing riyaaz again and for two years, I worked hard to bring back the charm in my voice,” she said.

And her voice came back. It was in 2017 that Deepali felt confident about her voice again. She was ready to let the world hear a new version of her and that’s when she recorded her rendition of Asha Bhosle’s song, ‘Mausam Mastana’ and put the video out on Facebook.

“The video got a lot of views. My target was to sing live without music and recording as that’s how singing auditions take place. I went from 200 views to 2,000 and it was huge for me. It has been 9 years since then,” she says.

That’s why the staggering reception to ‘Tere Paas Main’ means much more to her as the song is driving conversations around the film on social media. “Every artist dreams of a day like this. I have often seen songs of other artists going viral on the internet and now that my song is getting that traction, I am just holding myself and trying to experience how all of it feels. I was waiting for this day for so many years,” says the singer.

Deepali looks forward to get more playback singing opportunities in future. “I don’t have a typical voice. It has a different tonality. So, I hope they come up to me with songs where my voice goes well with the music.”

And would she ever make a film, having studied direction at FTII? “I dream of making at least one film in life. I have a beautiful story in mind which I definitely want to direct one day. But when I see Imtiaz Ali’s work, I feel scared. So, I am not thinking too much about it,” Deepali quips.