SPOTLIGHT
A MOTHER’S UNANSWERED WHATSAPP MESSAGE
AI-authored cinematic artiste Ayaan Malhotra turns one unanswered WhatsApp message – “Kha liya, beta?” – into a Hindi grief ballad about food and memory.
With Kha Liya, openly AI-authored cinematic artiste Ayaan Malhotra turns one unanswered WhatsApp message – “Kha liya, beta?” – into a Hindi grief ballad about food, memory, and the reply that came too late.
Some songs try to impress you. Kha Liya only wants to know if you have eaten. Released recently as a special music-video event, Kha Liya follows Malhotra as he returns again and again to his mother’s last WhatsApp message: “Kha liya, beta?” He types a reply, deletes it, and cannot press send. The whole song lives inside one small, unbearable moment: a son who finally eats, so that he can finally say, “Maa, maine kha liya.”
The video is deliberately small and human – no spectacle, no fantasy, no grand-staging. The camera stays slow and controlled, lit by natural light, holding ordinary middle-class spaces, shared food, trains and rain-wet streets with quiet elegance. Nothing is over-acted; the emotion is carried by restraint, in the everyday rituals of care that mothers leave behind.
Ayaan Malhotra is a calm, cinematic presence in Hindi music – elegant, emotionally controlled, a world that moves between devotion, heartbreak and family memory with restraint rather than spectacle. He is an openly AI-authored fictional screen character, created and directed by filmmaker Hisham Abdel Khalek. His voice, music, lyrics and visuals are made with AI tools under human creative direction. The project is transparent about that, but Kha Liya does not ask the audience to admire the tools. It asks them to sit with the feeling.
Ayan’s world spans devotion, heartbreak, festival joy, family memory and cross-cultural language bridges. But Kha Liya is the moment where that world becomes quiet enough to hear one mother’s question.
He began as a cinematic love letter to Indian music, film and emotion. His creator, Cairo-born and Paris-based filmmaker Abdel Khalek, has worked in film since 1999, but Indian cinema and music have lived with him since childhood – not as a recent discovery, but as a daily companion. Ayaan Malhotra is shaped from that lifelong audience love, and is built to grow into a collaborative universe for real Indian artistes at every level – from celebrated names to the emerging dancers, musicians and singers still waiting for their first real stage – each welcomed and credited by name as his world expands in the future.
“I’ve been making films since 1999,” says Abdel Khalek. “AI is like my camera. I still choose the concept, the words, the melody, the instruments, the light, the colour, the clothing, the framing and the final emotion. The tools have changed, but the work is still direction. Ayaan will keep releasing, and over time his world will grow beyond songs into longer cinematic storytelling. But the ambition of Kha Liya is smaller and far older than any technology: to make one person, somewhere, pick up the phone before it is too late.”
Ayaan Malhotra, created and directed by filmmaker Hisham Abdel Khalek under So Freakantastik in Paris, has kept an unbroken weekly release rhythm since Holi Hai in March across Indian and international languages.
Ayaan Malhotra is created and directed by filmmaker Hisham Abdel Khalek under So Freakantastik in Paris.
Every release is an original composition developed with AI music tools under Abdel Khalek’s writing, musical and visual direction – not a cover, remix or imitation of any existing artiste.
Abdel Khalek defines the concept, lyric direction, emotional arc, musical style, instruments, voice identity, image language and final edit.
Registered as intellectual property in France, Ayaan is built as a long-term cinematic music and screen character, not a hidden human singer, a one-off AI experiment, or an amateur fan project.
The first months were a deliberate choice – to build the body of work and lock Ayaan’s look and voice into one consistent identity before seeking an audience, so that he arrives as a fully formed character rather than a shifting experiment.
Kha Liya is that introduction: the first time the project steps forward and asks to be heard.
Ayaan’s catalogue streams on all major platforms – Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music, among others – with full music videos on his official YouTube channel, @ayaanmalhotramusic.
Releases to-date include:
Holi Hai, Dharma Kshetra, Eid Mubarak, Shri Ram Jai Ram, Chand Se Baatein, Rooh Ka Fitoor, Der Ho Gayi, Agar Phir Mile, among others.