tamilamerican singer sandhya chari was clear about one thing when it came to working on her debut single it needed to be meaningful rich and pay homage to her south asian roots in my roots sandhya explores her crosscultural journey through themes of feminism south asian unity and empowermenti have always wanted to enter the independent scene with a song and theme that resonated with me we wanted to showcase south asian unity on one platform media is often divisive when it comes to portraying regions and we have labels such as south and north we wanted to break that and depict unity especially in this industry she says and she does this by featuring 14 models from different indian cities and other south asian countries such as pakistan and nepalit was important for the song to stay authentic and clear of misrepresentation sandhya points out we see movies where tamil girls are portrayed by a white girl that is a misrepresentation if we are going to get someone to wear a kasavu sari i want that person to be malayali only then will we have a sense of pride so we made that extra effort it makes sense for me to wear a kanchipuram sari because i am from tamil nadu she addsthe song which is set to drop on december 3 depicts crosscultures in different senses be it through the lyrics and musical genres or through its costume and makeup the song has different elements such as south indian folk carnatic elements western pop beats and your typical bollywood vibes every 20 seconds in the song is a surprise for the listeners she says adding that the lyrics will be a mix of english tamil and hindisandhya wanted the song to be lyrically strong i wanted to create something powerful from a classical standpoint for instance the revathi ragam is very powerful i get goosebumps every time i listen to aigiri nandini i wanted to give a homage to brown women and influenced it with pop beats she sayshaving recently won the ar rahmans 99songscoverstar contest sandhya says she was clear about entering the independent space with something meaningful the contest really opened up doors for me it was a milestone in my career in south asian music you see highpitched singers get recognition but for rahman sir to recognise me a classical singer with a bass alto and mezzo voice gave me a sense of motivation i got to meet rahman sir virtually but it was a great experience she says