The track hit its breakdown—just the dhol and a single voice—and the entire hall screamed the next line in Punjabi, a hundred voices becoming one. Arjun felt the booth vibrate.

He grinned. “Watch.”

Simran ran up to the booth, breathless, mascara slightly smudged. “Okay. That one. That’s the best Punjabi song for dance. Put it on repeat for the next hour. Or forever.”

Then his eyes landed on it. The secret weapon. The track he’d discovered in a basement party in Brampton last winter, where three generations of Punjabis had lost their collective minds.

The opening wasn’t a beat. It was a breath —the distant sound of a tractor starting, a tumbi pluck like a rubber band snapping to attention. Then the dhol dropped. Not a polite, wedding-dhol. This was a Pind -dhol, the kind that tells your spine to forget everything it knows about posture.

Arjun scrolled through his curated wedding playlist. Honey Singh? Too dated. AP Dhillon? Too moody for a giddha . Diljit? Always a king, but tonight needed a jolt of pure, unapologetic chaos.

“Yaar, Arjun,” his sister Simran appeared at his elbow, gold bangles clinking. “Grandma’s asking if the DJ is on strike. Play something that actually makes people move .”