When a friend asked him for life advice, the American author and one of the pioneers of New Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson wrote, “To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal — to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.”
Like the author, who forged his own genre and sidestepped every rulebook along the way, Chaar Diwari is no fool. The Delhi-based producer, singer/songwriter and visual artist has been charting an instinctive, deeply personal course through Indian music without ever pretending to know exactly where it's all headed. There’s a certain unbothered grace to his trajectory and the way he skirts past expectations and delivers something new every time.
For an artist so acutely aware of the patterns that bind the industry, across genre, aesthetic, and the ever-looming demand for an artistic persona, Chaar Diwari remains refreshingly uninterested in those templates. His body of work is a restless, evolving experiment and expression. When asked whether he’s ever been concerned about sonic recognizability or establishing a distinct 'Chaar Diwari' sound, he responds with a clarity that borders on indifference.
“I think a song's recognisability for me might come from my imperfections and the way that even though I try my hardest [not to], sometimes people try to repeat themselves,” he says, acknowledging the inevitability of thematic or tonal echoes. But he’s not losing sleep over it. “I don't think that's important also. I mean, there are other artists if you want to be able to instantly recognise an artist. I just want to focus on being myself and making the music I want to and not overthink a lot.”
It’s this ease with ambiguity that gives Chaar Diwari his edge. He’s not scrambling for cohesion, nor is he deliberately evading it. Instead, his music evolves organically, strung together not by sonic trademarks but by the bare and beautiful inconsistencies of being human. His catalogue is more of a mirror than a brand, with every track refracting a different angle of his own self.
And yet, there’s nothing passive about his artistic stance. If anything, Chaar Diwari has made a ritual of defying the norms, both sonically and visually. His music videos, like his tracks, pulse with a kind of irreverence; disruptive in their aesthetics and arresting in their storytelling. That sensibility, he admits, is drawn from a lineage of rule-breakers he deeply admires.
“I think Rehman is someone who I really look up to. He is always trying to be fresh. And even though he has so many years in the industry, he is still pushing and making music that no one has heard. I was really inspired when I listened to Chamkila's album that he did recently, especially a song called 'Baaja'. That song is constantly evolving and in the context of the film, it really fit perfectly. Something like that really puts me in awe.”Chaar Diwaari
That admiration is perhaps the clearest indicator of how Chaar Diwari sees the artistic act: not as a performance of mastery, but as a search and an endless transformation. He also credits The Beatles as another force of inspiration, specifically their restless reinvention from album to album. For him, this refusal to stagnate is a philosophy.
Where this becomes most potent is in his lyrics. There’s an almost forensic honesty to the way he maps emotions like grief, shame, volatility, and especially self-doubt. In a genre like hip-hop, where bravado and performative confidence are often expected, his vulnerability feels refreshing. “I think hip hop as an idea itself started as a rebellion,” he says. “And I think trying to pose to be a part of a rebellion is like crazy to me. If you really want to stand out, you have to be yourself and that's what my music is about…it’s just being who you truly are and speaking what you truly believe in.”
His tracks 'Thehra', 'LOVESEXDHOKA', and 'Farebi' loosely form what the artist refers to, somewhat casually, as the Pyaar Diwaari Arc. “I actually don't remember how the Pyaar Diwaari thing started,” he shrugs. “I think it was just me making a reel for 'Thehra'. And while I was making the announcement reel, I think I said Pyaar Diwaari in it. And I thought it sounded cool. I stuck with it.”
The markers of all great artists has always been a North Star of an intuition and the courage to follow it through which what's driving Chaar Diwaari. Growth now, for him, is less about mastering gear or technique and more about embracing feeling as the primary tool. “I'm focusing more on the way I feel, the way I'm able to express what I feel. And feeling is what is guiding my evolution as an artist right now.” That kind of intuitive, embodied learning is hard to quantify, but it certainly shows in his music especially his biggest hits.
Even if the naming was spontaneous, the emotional architecture of the arc runs deep. “Thehra was like falling in love and wanting to hold on to a person. LOVESEXDHOKA — that’s obviously about breaking up. And Farebi is reflecting on your relationship and everything that comes with it.” What emerges is not just a thematic cycle but a psychological excavation of love’s many lives — desire, betrayal, reckoning. The emotional clarity is piercing, almost uncomfortably so.
But Chaar Diwari is not interested in creating mythologies around his method. He resists the urge to over-intellectualise his work, even when the subtext is rich. His journey from music school dropout to independent artist is not framed as a rebellion against academia but rather as a natural drift toward what felt more expansive.
“A lot of development and growth as an artist definitely happened while I was in music school. But since then, I think my growth has just been more about how I grow as a person. I'm learning that growing as a person is equally important, if not more. So I think I've spent a lot of time just [sitting] with that fact and having that responsibility. I just want to live and be a person; be a dude, and let that dictate how I want to make music. But I also want to be the greatest artist of all time."Chaar Diwaari
Chaar Diwari operates less like a calculated auteur and more like a conduit — open, alert, and deeply receptive to the zeitgeist. His process is instinctive, shaped by what moves him — be it an internal conflict, a memory, a scene from a Bollywood film, or something from pop culture in general. This openness, and refusal to 'perform', paradoxically results in something universally resonant. His music speaks to his generation not because he is trying to represent them, but because he is them — processing love, shame, vulnerability, and confusion in real time, with a slice of self-flagellation and satire.
Follow Chaar Diwaari here.
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