New Delhi, July 11 -- In Hindi cinema, where full-fledged song sequences are quietly vanishing, Anurag Basu and Pritam remain proudly defiant. Their director-composer partnership-now two decades strong-has not just endured but deepened with time. Instead of chasing trends, they've doubled down on musicality. Their latest, Metro In Dino (released on 4 July), features more than 20 songs spread across two volumes. Half of them appear in the film as musical-style numbers-where characters sing their feelings instead of speaking them-a form Basu fully embraced in his misunderstood passion project Jagga Jasoos (2017).

Pritam may be known as a certified hit-machine, but it's with Basu that he is at his most experimental and playful. And whether ...