Roide aila ga juraite offers a taste of Roid

Mejbaur Rahman Sumon announced his film Roid at a small gathering in Niketon, Dhaka, and released the first song from it before Pahela Baishakh. Within days, the comments section had filled up in a way that film promos rarely do. 

People were writing about closing their eyes and feeling their minds go quiet. One viewer said no Bangladeshi film had ever looked like this and another said, "Songs like this don't go viral. They spread slowly."

The film follows a saint and his unhinged wife, a story he has described as being about love, silence, and the primal layers underneath human connection. Roid was selected for the Tiger Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, one of the more rigorous entry points into international arthouse cinema. 

The song comes from that same headspace. Rajib Ahmed Raju, who wrote, composed, and sang Roid E Aila Ga Juraite, has said the title came nearly two years before the melody. That time taken to produce is somehow visible in the finished work, because nothing sounds like it was hurried into place.

Music direction, mixing, mastering, and audio production were mostly handled by Rasheed Sharif Shoaib and Studio Cowbell. Anyone who followed Meghdol from its early period would know how much weight Shoaib's involvement carries here. 

Shoaib and Sumon have a long shared history as peers and bandmates, and what that produces in the studio is not just familiarity but a genuine musical shorthand that is hard to manufacture. 

The chemistry and understanding showed up in Hawa and it shows up again here. Shoaib played piano, guitar, and synthesiser on the track as well, and his mixing has a consistent signature across his work; a kind of smoothness built into the sound at a foundational level, which is not decorative nor any instrument particularly screaming to show off. And that is what makes you register the song as warmth before registering it as craft.

The piano is easy to miss on a first listen. It sits quietly beneath the rest of the arrangement, but it is the thing holding all the elements in balance. The shenai does something different entirely. It appears briefly in perfect moments to create that flavour of longing. 

For all of that, the song's real intention only becomes fully apparent around the 3:20 mark, when the backing vocals finally enter. Up to that point, Roid E Aila Ga Juraite has been moving at its own unhurried pace, warm and accumulative, asking the listeners to slow down, then the backing vocals change everything. Fifteen seconds after they arrive, at 3:35, the chorus opens, and what has been building across the entire song is finally, completely released. 

But the backing vocals turn out to be where all the emotional weight was heading. Listeners paying close attention will feel the goosebumps before they articulate what happened. 

The music video and cinematography deserve a separate appreciation, along with the song. The musicians and locals walking through hillocks beside a waterbody might seem like it was shot in Birishiri at first glance, but actually it was shot in Companiganj, Sylhet. 

Sumon has talked about making Roid as a response to a particularly restless moment, a film about stillness offered to audiences who have forgotten what stillness feels like. The song makes that argument before the film is screened nationally.