This Independence Day, indie band When Chai Met Toast made a colourful statement on the need for independent thinking with their new video song, Fight. The single in English is currently trending on social media, with 45,000 views and counting, after it was released on YouTube.
“The song is not about a physical fight but the fight that we all fight within, to break free of everything that restricts us; the fight that even today, 70 years after Independence, inevitably follows that decision to tread a different path. The song talks about the warrior and ninja in each and everyone of us, the Gladiator who finds the path to triumph before we sleep everyday,” says Achyuth Jaigopal, lead guitarist of the Kochi-based band.
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Different path
He founded the band along with lead vocalist Aswin Gopakumar, who hails from Thiruvananthapuram. “For instance, Aswin and our keyboardist Palee Francis are engineers but left it behind and chose to devote themselves to music. They always find themselves having to face the music for their decisions. So too, our drummer Pai Sailesh. Taking about myself, I also constantly face the challenges of being a non-conformist and still fight the odds everyday. I think it’s a relevant topic for a lot of people who think out of the box, especially the young; they can identify with what we are saying,” adds the youngster, who is also the guitarist for The Raghu Dixit Project.
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Fight comes hot on the tracks of When Chai Met Toast’s popular LP, The Joy of Little Things, released last year. The quirky, colourful video of Fight has been directed by Ganesh Raj, his first work after Aanandam , and shot by Anend C. Chandran, who handled the camera for Neram, Premam and Aanandam . “I was rather excited by the concept because those inner struggles is never-ending. I thought about how we can break free and grow in the process and came up with the idea of telling the story of four individuals – a painter, a boxer, a mime artist and a supermodel, whom we nicknamed the Diva. As the song progresses, we see how each of them changes their life from monochrome to the triumphant colours rainbow,” says Ganesh.
The four-minute video itself has been inspired by pop art. “I have always wanted to try out pop art. It was technically a bit challenging because with all those in-your-face colours, it’s very easy for the visuals to appear amateurish. As such, we bought in Mehek Malhotra, a pop artist from Mumbai to make it pop out,” explains Ganesh.
Check out the video on When Chai Met Toast’s official YouTube channel.