There is a certain sparkle in Chor (Thief), a song set to an earworm of a hook, drawing on the idea of renouncing the divisions and hatred in the world, that's taken social media by storm. In the song, Noida-based chartered accountant-turned-musician named Justh, is asking a thief who is in his house to take away everything he owns: his name, his work, his god, his home, his wins, his losses, his happiness, his sadness, his caste, his status, his everything. The polite challenge to conventional ideas, while tackling social and spiritual aspects of human life and a request for “azadi” from everything, a sort of salvation from all of these things that tie down a person and thus the world, have earned Justh more than 70 lakh views and a massive following. While social media is bonding over the song, which has already been turned into numerous Instagram reels and has actors such as Madhuri Dixit, Mouni Roy, and Ashish Vidyarthi among others presenting their take, the song has found varied interpretations, something the singer-songwriter was aiming at. “I didn’t think the song would find this level of attention. I had some hope but not to this extent where every player in music – big and small – wants to work with me and so many people have loved the song,” says Justh, who does not want to define the song and says that the interpretation of it – political, spiritual, social – is one’s own. “I won’t assign meaning. That will restrict the song,” he says. Justh, who is in his early 30s, does not see himself purely as a musician. “I see myself as a person who expresses his life journey and the vehicle for that is going to be music. Chor is just an expression of that journey,” he says. Justh, who grew up in East Delhi’s Krishna Nagar and was always fascinated with stories and poetry, wrote regularly for student sections of various newspapers while he was in school. Growing up in an academic family, dinner table conversations veered towards many subjects. “Amid the nuanced conversations of home, there was an absolute heartland feel in the neighbourhood. A lot of business families from Chandni Chowk and Sadar Bazar dot the neighbourhood, which has a certain ‘Oye tere ko dikha dunga’ type of vibe. It was like the best of both worlds,” he says. Music came to Justh through film songs of the 90s that were regular on cable TV and via his two elder brothers – a doctor and an engineer now – learning the basics of Indian classical music at home. “I’d heard a bit of it, but was never interested,” says Justh, who studied at Delhi’s Venkateshwar College, was active in theatre, read Rabindranath Tagore and Kabir’s dohas, and was inclined towards filmmaking. He started with an acting course and made a three-minute silent short film titled Flee, which found some attention internationally. He then became a third AD (assistant director), rising to chief assistant AD on Ayyushmann Khurrana’s Hawaizaada (2015), Vibhu Puri’s directorial debut which tanked. “I gave it my all, thinking it will be a masterpiece. But when you attempt something drastic, you can fail badly. But I learned a lot,” says Justh, who returned to Delhi to change his “lifestyle”. “I was fat, I’d drink and smoke. I wanted to just quit everything and get fit,” he says. Justh, who uses a stage name and does not want to divulge his given name in order to maintain the “mystique” around him, says he has created the word ‘Justh’ and that it means a "state of love and energy". “The word does not exist in Hindi, Urdu and Sanskrit. It has nothing to do with justaju (quest),” he says. He has a story too on how he turned to music. "I woke up one night at 2 am and said to myself that I was born to do music. This is as truthful as it gets. It was as if the lightning had struck. There is no reference point,” says Justh. No amount of hard-to-swallow looks and expressions change his mind about his story. “I understand it’s stranger than fiction. But it is what it is,” he says. The seed of Chor was sown then. Justh then decided to spend the next four years learning the ropes of singing and playing the guitar and followed it up by performing in the streets in India and the US. The conversation with his parents on his career switch was awkward in the beginning but they went along with his decision. “My brothers sponsored my trip to the US, where I sang something or the other on one chord. Some liked it, some ignored it. But the experience was great,” says Justh, who applied for a grant in the US and got one for 10,000 dollars, which he put into the video and production of Chor, which is shot on the ghats of Varanasi. “I want the song to have its own legs and walk for 500 years,” says Justh, who is working on other soon-to-be-released pieces.
