Three units per matra — the phrase compresses to a third of its span. This is genuinely triplet territory: in a duple tala it recolors the pulse entirely, which makes it both harder to hold and more striking than dugun.
It appears in systematic speed sequences (barabar, dugun, tigun, chaugun) and in tihai design, where three-rate statements map naturally onto threefold structures. Clean execution demands an internal triplet grid; approximating it by feel is immediately audible against a lehra.