Akshath, the independent artist behind “Naadaaniyan,” mines his own heartbreak on his new single “Aadat Nahi Hai” - a music video that collapses the distance between cinema and lived experience, between second chances and missed beginnings. Written and directed by Gideon D’Souza, the video opens on what appears to be an emotionally charged breakup scene before revealing itself as a film set, reframing everything that follows as both performance and memoir.
"Aadat Nahi Hai" is a quieter kind of breakup song. Rather than centering a dramatic ending, it lingers on the small things that disappear once a relationship is over - the morning messages, the routine calls, the shared habits that quietly stop mattering to anyone but the person left holding onto them. Built on intimate lyricism, the track leans into the same soothing, confessional sound that's made Akshath one of the more closely followed voices in India's indie-pop space.
Akshath exists in three registers throughout the story: as the creative force behind the track, the singer, and the actor reliving a scene he himself has lived through. At the centre of it all is a guilt-ridden director who repeatedly calls “cut” each time the actor hands over a memory box to the female lead, unable to sit with what he’s witnessing because it mirrors his own failed love story - one he never fought for when he had the chance. The memory box becomes the video's central prop, a stand-in for everything unresolved between them, reappearing each time the director's composure slips.
Photo: YouTube/Akshath
The female lead carries an equally heavy emotional weight. She is the one who fell first and stayed longer, for someone who simply wasn't ready. The video follows her through moments of quiet overthinking, watching him move through a room while emotionally slipping further away, replaying memories that probably meant more to her. At one point, she almost adds a polaroid to her vision board but ultimately hesitated to keep - a small gesture that says more about her state of mind than any line of dialogue could.
By the end, the director finally says "cut" with a smile, because this time, he held on to what was his. It's a small rewrite, but a pointed one: the ending Akshath gives his character on set is the one he didn't get to have when the real relationship was actually ending — fiction doing the work that real life never got the chance to.
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