For Main Vaapas Aaunga — a love story by filmmaker Imtiaz Ali set against the backdrop of sectarian violence and mass displacement during the Partition — promotions are being led by the breezy Maskara, a tease of a track, picturised on actors Sharvari Wagh and Vedang Raina.

The ditty has not just flooded social media but also seeped into numerous Instagram reels, reigniting conversations about how ‘old-school Rahman’ is back. The song has already crossed over 10 million views on YouTube.

Penned by Irshad Kamil, Rahman’s composition in the Naseeruddin Shah and Diljit Dosanjh-starrer carries quite a bit within its three minutes: the freshness of a contemporary indie-pop track while still retaining the warmth and rhythmic familiarity of a Punjabi romantic number and about a minute that is like an old-style Bollywood serenade.

The song is also the debut of Kolkata-based bass player and singer Nilanjana Ghosh Dastidar, a new name in the list of current woman playback singers. But for those regular at AR Rahman’s live concerts, a sari-clad Nilanjana can often be spotted on one side of the stage, bass guitar slung across her shoulder, playing amid the spectacle of the composer’s slickly mounted outings. Sometimes she sings some bits during the performance of Patakha guddi (Highway, 2014) and Chhaiya Chhaiya (Dil Se.., 1998). Rahman has always wanted her to sing more.

But Maskara came to her “in the most abrupt way”, in July 2025, when she was touring with the composer in the US. Ready to retire for the day in a Florida hotel, Rahman’s assistant called her to the next room, where he was working and asked her to record Maskara amid a basic setup. “I had no idea about anything when I walked into that room. I thought he wanted to tell me something about an upcoming show. But he just turned around and said, ‘Nilanjana, I want you to sing this song.’ It was so random,” she says in a telephone conversation from Kolkata.

The song was recorded in a hotel room-turned-DIY studio and the team ended up using mattresses to soundproof it. At the time, she had no idea about what the film was and who were its actors. The brief was to not do it like a monotonous song but get the “quirky, teenager vibe” in place and give it a day-dreaming feel. Another starting point with the brief was that Rahman asked her to treat the song the way Asha Bhosle would. “Rahman sir never asked me to sing in a particular tone. But he asked me to think of the flirtatious songs Asha ji has sung and understand that attitude and tonal texture. He then left the room and I was left alone with words and the tune,” says Nilanjana, who recorded without a scratch track with Hiral Viradia, Rahman’s music producer and editor.

The result is a song whose charms lay in Western pop textures and voice modulations, with a folk rhythm from Punjab in parts besides an easy melodic drift. Nilanjana later also layered her bass guitar on the vocals. “I still didn’t know if this was going to be the final take or had I just sung a scratch to help someone else record. But I got a call that Imtiaz sir loved it… the newness and the quirkiness of it,” says Nilanjana, who has also played on the background score of the film.

Growing up in Bandel, West Bengal, a former Portuguese colony known for the famed Bandel church from 1599, Nilanjana always wanted to be a singer. Even though her father, Sandipan Ghosh Dastidar, is a bass player, Nilanjana followed her mother, a Rabindra sangeet practitioner and a huge Salil Chowdhury fan, and as is tradition in Bengali homes, began training in Hindustani classical music. But what she heard was just about everything. While she liked what she was learning, including Rabindra sangeet and Nazrul geeti, her father would blast Bangla bands at home. Then, there was her fascination with Western music, which developed while listening to a lot of Cliff Richards and losing her head over Kenny G. There were also her prized Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle CDs gifted by her father.

Nilanjana added the bass guitar to her journey less than a decade ago. She was always a fan of the instrument, thanks to her father introducing her to the music of many noted bass players as a child. “My ears were always extra open to the bass parts of a song. But I never thought I was going to do music professionally,” says Nilanjana, who began learning the instrument in 2017. She was 21 then. “By learning the bass, I was attempting to sing better,” says Nilanjana.

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She was looking at finishing her academics, “getting a job and building a good financial structure” so that she could invest in her music later on. She also participated in the Bengali edition of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa in 2022 and began making some money with concerts. But she felt she needed to learn more. That is when she decided to stop everything, shut herself in her room, work on her own music and take a deep dive into the world of practice. She was also uploading her bass guitar videos on YouTube around the same time.

She had just interviewed for a job at a bank when she got a call from Rahman’s assistant to travel with the concert crew as their bass player. Percussionist Ranjit Barot had discovered her online and told Rahman about her about five years ago. “I was super nervous. Once I got on the stage, with an amazing crew, the nervousness was all gone,” says Nilanjana, who is busy working on her own music, even as she continues to tour with Rahman. She is still finding the success of Maskara surreal. As the Internet bonds over it, Nilanjana still feels that she “could have sung it better.”