I have a group of friends that live and breathe indie - one wants to be an indie filmmaker and one, an indie musician. One of them calls Dosa an indie Pizza. But what does indie truly mean? It is, at the base of it, a lack of centralised affiliation. But it is also creative independence. It takes a special amount of that independence to make something that you can truly call your own; something that you can call 'homegrown'. 'ESWY' is Aman Sagar and Sanjeeta Bhattacharya’s new single, with a music video directed by Yuvrajaago.

At first sight, ESWY is the story of a hopeless romantic through seven lives and seven different eras — almost everything changes except his love interest. ESWY encapsulates a concept that has always been right in front of us, but somehow has never been thought of as something beyond a myth. It’s a concept my parents, grandparents, and even my cats have heard with a slight variation - the concept of 7 births of Saath Janam. Despite getting close enough to the love of his life in every life, our protagonist meets a fatal end. What will happen at the end of the seventh life? Through the 7 lives, set in 7 different years, we see the subtleties of love, loss, fate, and time. These elements blend the border between past and present love through a uniquely Indian visual lens.

At the roots of it, ESWY is an ode to a visual language that feels bigger than our phone screens. Voiced by Jaaved Jaaferi, the music video has been treated by its creators as more than something we just watch and scroll through on social media. It flows with a visible sense of conscious filmmaking.

The film serves as evidence of a shift that is reinvigorating the homegrown indie pop music video. This shift in conceptualising music videos that are uniquely Indian, selling curiosity and whimsy is a move that we’ve seen in recent times with artists like Chaar Diwaari and Aksomaniac.

There’s a balance that has become possible to achieve — art fuelled by creative independence, that also reaches the right audience, and gets the numbers.

Beyond the music video, the creators behind ESWY have created an ecosystem. The words 'ESWY fixed me' was floated around Instagram like a little cloud; the idea behind this being that honest art gives us hope. Marketing art like this is such an intriguing way of garnering attention.

But at what point does advertising become essential for the creative arts? ESWY's marketing on Instagram found an organic audience that didn't just resonate with the meme and design culture of the page, but was also curious enough to stick around and find out what the page meant. From a website to a kickass marketing campaign to an Instagram page centred on retro design, indie pop, collaboration and uplifting indie artists — they’ve created a bonafide indie economy.

The creators used social media and design as a way to bring to life their film's visual language and encapsulate points of cultural influence from our world into the film’s world.

So what’s the future of the indie pop music video landscape? At a time where everything has been reconfigured to be independent, ESWY is only the beginning of something bigger.

“We have Aman's (Sagar's) EP, 7 smaller music videos of each world, and eventually a feature film from the same world. If ESWY was a glance through the window, we want the film to be an experience through the door,” says the ESWY team. 

Indie pop as a genre India has found its way into mainstream phones, we hope that it only keeps growing. It's laid the foundations for an artist friendly ecosystem that aims to be more than just 'content'. 

But what does ESWY mean? Jaaved Jafferi's audible cameo will tell you that. ESWY is now out on YouTube.

If you enjoyed reading this, here's more from Homegrown:

Aksomaniac's New Single Turns Queer Self-Discovery Into A Playful & Poetic Ritual

Chaar Diwaari’s Latest Music Video Sees Him (Literally) Wrestling With Imposter Syndrome

Devika Mahajan's 'Aaj Shanibaar' Is An Ode To Female Friendships That Feel Like Home