CHENNAI: Headlined by Fatima Sana Shaikh and Vijay Varma, Gustaakh Ishq is directed by Vibhu Puri. Oscar Award-winner Resul Pookutty is taking care of the sound.

His mandate was to evoke yearning without depending on background score or conventional cues. Resul describes it as one of the most delicate challenges. “Vibhu told me, ‘I want the sound to ache, not speak.’ That’s a beautiful brief, but also a terrifying one. You cannot hide music. Everyday things become a part of the emotional grammar.”

Instead of leaning on dialogue, the sound engineer constructed a minimalist palette of ambient cues - from the slow creak of an old wooden door, the soft echo of a distant azaan drifting over rooftops at dawn. “These sounds carry memory of people and we tapped into that,” he explains.

Gustaakh Ishq, produced by Manish Malhotra and Dinesh Malhotra, will release on November 28.