Kaaktaal: The sound of ordinary life

Some bands are remembered for changing music. Others are remembered for changing the way people listen to it. Kaaktaal belongs to neither category.

Over the course of just a few years, the band carved out a space of its own not through spectacle, virtuosity or carefully crafted personas, but through a quiet honesty that felt increasingly rare. Its songs rarely chased definitive answers or grand declarations. Instead, they lingered in the spaces between memory and longing, hope and disappointment, home, and departure, trusting listeners to discover their own meanings within them.

Perhaps that is why, even during the band's current break, Kaaktaal continues to find new listeners. The music does not demand attention so much as it invites it. One listener finds a song that echoes the loneliness of leaving home; another returns to the same lyrics after heartbreak, or during moments of uncertainty, only to hear something entirely different.

The songs become less like fixed stories and more like companions changing quietly as the people listening to them change.

In the process, Kaaktaal achieved something few bands manage. It showed that the most enduring songs do not always come from extraordinary moments. Sometimes, they emerge from ordinary lives, carrying just enough honesty to make strangers feel understood.

Making the ordinary matter

Across Kaaktaal's songs, the ordinary refuses to stay ordinary. Bus stops, old homes, moonlight, rain, jasmine flowers, and quiet roads appear so often that they almost feel like recurring characters in the band's music.

Yet for Asif Iqbal, better known as AiA Lemonsky, Kaaktaal's founder, lyricist, and vocalist, these images are neither calculated symbols nor carefully planted metaphors.

"I don't really know; they aren't conscious choices," he says. "I'm definitely intrigued by them, probably because these 'ordinary' things somehow ground my own existence."

That instinct perhaps explains why Kaaktaal's songwriting rarely reaches for spectacle. Instead of grand declarations, the band lingers on moments most people overlook, allowing everyday places to carry the emotional weight of memory, longing, and change.

To Asif, ordinary things are "probably the closest thing to honesty". Once stripped of labels like special, good, bad, or ugly, they simply exist, embracing "all the perks and troubles of just being". It's a philosophy that quietly runs through Kaaktaal's discography, where familiar objects are never reduced to background scenery but become living parts of the stories they tell.

Looking back, Asif finds a different truth in each recurring image. "Bus stops are unplanned moments of rest before transitions; old homes are abandoned and missed; moonlight is the beauty of effort amidst adversity; the Shiuli phool pays tribute to unnoticed sacrifices; roads are the silent assists in our journeys; birds animate our silence; and rain clouds prove that even cycles can be emotional."

None of these meanings, however, were designed to function as fixed symbols. They emerged because these were the things that naturally found their way into his writing. "That's definitely worth writing about," he says.

Perhaps that is what makes Kaaktaal's world feel so familiar. The band never asks listeners to search for extraordinary moments. Instead, it quietly reminds them that the ordinary has been carrying extraordinary emotions all along.

Capturing essences, not answers 

One of the striking things about Kaaktaal's songwriting is how rarely it explains itself. The lyrics are rich with images and emotions, yet they seldom arrive at a single conclusion. Instead of offering neat explanations, they leave room for uncertainty, allowing different listeners to walk away with entirely different meanings. 

That openness, Asif says, is not a carefully crafted technique so much as a reflection of human limitation. "We haven't reached the point where our thoughts can be saved in a folder and transferred to another person's mind without data loss — so we're blessed with the room to find our own meanings anyway," he says. 

For him, songwriting is less about communicating precise ideas than about, in his own words, "capturing essences."

"I don't really have anything direct to say, because I can't possibly know enough," he explains. "It's all just an effort to capture essences. And because interpreting an essence is so subjective, it gives people a lot of freedom." 

Perhaps that freedom may explain why two people can listen to the same Kaaktaal song and hear entirely different stories.

"Abar Dekha Hole" may become a song about a relationship that never found its way back for one listener, while another hears the quiet grief of growing apart from an older version of themselves. "Ghorchara" can sound like leaving home, but it can just as easily become a song about outgrowing childhood.

"Chorki" carries the warmth of intimacy for some and the ache of impossible longing for others. "Udhao" feels, at once, like a meditation on lost innocence, changing identities, and the unsettling realisation that something essential has quietly slipped away.

"Shiuli" may be heard as a reflection on impermanence, unnoticed sacrifice or simply the quiet beauty of letting go, while "Golokdhadha", with its maze-like reflections on identity and contradiction, can feel deeply personal to anyone trying to make sense of themselves.

Even "Mongora", with its repeated refrain of "Aar mongora kichhu mene niyechhi" (Thus, I have made my peace with the make-believe), can be heard as resignation, acceptance, survival or simply the quiet act of making peace with life.

The lyrics rarely insist on one interpretation because they were never written to.

Rather than answering emotional questions, Kaaktaal's songs simply sit beside them. They acknowledge longing without defining its source, memory without specifying whose memory it is, and loss without deciding what has been lost. In doing so, the songs become less like stories being told and more like spaces waiting to be inhabited.

The songs that grow with you

Songs often begin as someone else's story. Over time, however, they become inseparable from our own. A lyric written from one person's experience can quietly absorb another person's memories, heartbreaks, departures, and moments of change.

Perhaps that is why Kaaktaal's music continues to feel deeply personal to so many listeners  not because the songs explain their emotions, but because they leave enough room for people to bring their own lives into them.

For Asif, that connection is rooted in the very experiences that shape people. Looking back, he believes the recurring themes of memory, home, change, and longing in Kaaktaal's music were never deliberate choices, they were simply reflections of life itself.

"These are the things that build us, shape us, and fuel us to keep moving," he says. "They make an ever-changing life worth experiencing. It's the exact same cycle over and over again, yet it feels completely different every time we live it."

That understanding perhaps explains why Kaaktaal's songs so often become companions during life's uncertain chapters.

For Aditi, Kaaktaal's melancholy found a language in "Mongora". The song's repeated acceptance of life's disappointments and contradictions felt less like surrender and more like the quiet exhaustion of someone learning to carry what cannot be changed. The refrain - "Aar mongora kichhu mene niyechhi"  became deeply personal to her.

"I resonate very much with the lyrics," she says. For her, "Abar Dekha Hole" became tied to a particular person, carrying the ache of a connection that exists somewhere between memory and absence. "Chorki", meanwhile, evoked a nostalgia she found difficult to explain a longing not necessarily for a specific moment, but for a feeling that had already slipped away.

She also frequently returns to "Shiuli", a song that carries the quiet melancholy of things that are beautiful precisely because they are temporary, capturing the emotions attached to moments that cannot be held forever.

When asked to describe Kaaktaal's music without using words like sad, nostalgic, or beautiful, she describes it as "melancholically soothing".

The reasons people turn to Kaaktaal may differ, but the emotions they find within the songs often meet at the same place. For some, it is the weight of a memory they cannot return to; for others, it is the uncertainty of stepping into a life they have never known before.

Shahriar discovered Kaaktaal during a period when everything around him was changing. Leaving behind the familiarity of home, he found herself navigating a new life filled with unfamiliar experiences and emotions. In that uncertain space, Kaaktaal's songs became a quiet companion; one that seemed to understand the loneliness of adapting to change.

"That's when I started listening to Kaaktaal," he says.

For him, "Ghorchara" became more than just a song; it became an internal conversation during that period of adjustment. It reflected the loneliness of living away from family, the uncertainty of building a new life, and the process of learning to find comfort in unfamiliar surroundings.

"The song literally felt like my intrapersonal conversation at that time," he says.

He believes Kaaktaal became part of his journey of adapting to change. His connection with "Abar Dekha Hole" and "Chorki" comes from another emotional space, but the feeling remains similar. To him, Kaaktaal feels like "peace" - a "daily conversation" and "a pure magic of words".

Two listeners. Two different moments in life. Two different ways of finding themselves in the same music. Perhaps that is the quiet power of Kaaktaal. The songs do not promise that sadness will disappear. Instead, they give melancholy a place to breathe allowing memories, uncertainties and unfinished feelings to exist without demanding an answer.

Where melancholy learns to breathe
For all the melancholy that runs through Kaaktaal's music, the songs rarely feel hopeless.

There are goodbyes, abandoned homes, unanswered questions and memories that refuse to fade. Yet none of them ask listeners to remain in despair. Instead, the songs make room for difficult emotions, allowing sadness and joy, hope and disappointment, acceptance, and longing to exist side by side.

Perhaps that is because Kaaktaal never treats melancholy as something to be conquered. It treats it as something to understand.

Asif believes people spend much of their lives searching for happiness, only to discover that life rarely offers one emotion without another.

"Probably because we spend so much of our time trying to find happiness, only to find the exact opposite," he says. "Sometimes, accepting life as a mixture of both  and finding the beauty in the sadness  is what actually brings comfort."

That understanding is one many listeners seem to recognise instinctively. Among them is Izraan, who says he finds solace in Kaaktaal's sad songs. Rather than pulling him deeper into sorrow, they offer a sense of companionship  reminding him that sadness is not something to escape, but something that can be acknowledged, shared, and quietly lived through.

Looking back at Kaaktaal's journey, Asif describes the band as "a roadside gathering of friends and strangers where you can sing sad songs at the top of your lungs and feel happy about it."

Happy songs, he says, are shared like food, while quieter ones become spaces where people can pause, reflect and simply exist together. It is also a place where "the words of the ordinary that never felt special enough to be spoken finally find a voice," and where "souls hiding from expected norms find hands to hold."

Perhaps that is Kaaktaal's quietest achievement. Its songs never ask listeners to overcome melancholy or leave it behind. Instead, they offer something gentler: the reassurance that sadness, too, deserves a place to rest  and that even life's heaviest emotions become a little easier to carry when someone else has already found the words for them.

'Jong Dhora Gaan'

 Perhaps no phrase captures Kaaktaal more completely than the one Asif chooses himself. When asked to describe the band's music in just three words, he offers an answer that feels almost disarmingly simple: "Jong Dhora Gan" - rusted songs.

It is not a phrase of self-criticism, nor is it an attempt at modesty. Instead, it reflects a philosophy that has quietly shaped Kaaktaal's music from the very beginning.

"They aren't perfect, musically or thematically," he says. "In a lot of places, the voicings don't match the tune, and the words don't match the vibe. But in that space between what a song should be and what it is, there is rust. It's a dissonance that somehow resonates with people. It's not intentional, but that's exactly how it is."

That idea perhaps explains why Kaaktaal has always felt so different. In an era where artists are often expected to cultivate polished identities and carefully refined sounds, the band moved in the opposite direction. It embraced hesitation instead of certainty, sincerity instead of spectacle, and imperfection instead of polish.

The same philosophy shaped Asif's creative process. Songs were rarely laboured over for weeks or months. More often, they arrived in a burst of impulse - written, recorded, filmed, and released before self-doubt had the chance to intervene.

"Making things is an impulsive process for me. Whether it's finishing a drawing, an animation or a song, it's like breathing - I suffocate if I can't do it," he says.

Looking back, he admits that many of those songs later struck him as "lame, cliché, or immature". But rather than revisiting or refining them, he chose to let them remain exactly as they were.

"Eventually, I made peace with it and learned to acknowledge that this immature, cliché, glorious mess is just me."

Perhaps that is Kaaktaal's quietest legacy. The songs never insisted on certainty. They found beauty in the unfinished, comfort in melancholy and hope without ever needing to announce it. Even during the band's current break, that sense of possibility lingers like the promise of a morning that has not yet arrived.

As one of the band's own lyrics puts it,

"বছর পাঁচেক ঘুমের শেষে হয়তো

রোদেলা এক সকাল জাগবে…."