Chhaayaageet #119 - “Ye kya bakwaas lyrics likhe hai tumne. Marwaoge kya sabko.”
It is an interesting concept. The protagonist is a gangster who commits crimes, goes to prison, escapes from prison, and commits more crimes. The cycle continues. But there is goodness in his heart. That is pretty much the film.
The filmmaker has directed similar plots before and they were all mega-hits. The storyline is always good in his movies but the music makes the difference.
He is sitting with his staple duo composers at his place. “Ye gaana iss film ka main gaana hai. Heroine villain ke liye nach aur gaa rahi hai. Koi dhun tayyaar karo.” This is the main song of the film. The heroine is singing and dancing for the villain. Compose a tune for this situation.
The composers are eager to impress their old boss. They have been delivering to his expectations for quite some time now. “Koi baat nahi. Kiss tarah ki dhun soch rahe hai aap?” No problem. What do you have in mind? The filmmaker starts pacing slowly.
“Mein ek baar Mt. Abu ghoom raha tha. Kuch shooting ki locations ki talaash thi. Yahan par meri mulaqaat ek chhote ladke se hui jo ek badi pyaari dhun bajaa raha tha. Maine woh record kar li. Ye lo, tum bhi sunno.“ I was in Mount Abu looking for shoot locations and I saw a small kid on the way playing an attractive tune on his iktara. I recorded it. Here it is.
The composers listen carefully. “Ye to Rajasthan folk music hai.” This is Rajasthani folk music.
The tune gets composed in the next few days. The composers take inspiration from a variety of Rajasthani folk songs.
All four of them decide to meet at the filmmaker’s place. The lyrics have to be dealt with now. The lyricist is still not clear about the situation. The filmmaker goes through the situation once again with the lyricist. The lyricist provides the thumbs up. They all adjourn for the day.
The filmmaker knows that he will be receiving a call later that evening. The lyricist is not one of those folks who keep ruminating on a song. The phone rings at the far corner of the room.
“Hello Bakshi sahib, muhje pata tha tum call karoge. Gaana likh liya kya?” Hello Mr. Bakshi, I knew you would call. Have you finished the lyrics?
The filmmaker is giddy that he was able to predict the call. The lyricist is ready on the other side. “Haanji bilkul. Aapko mukhda sunata hoon.” Yes Sir. Let me sing for you the mukhda.
He is only able to complete the first line of the mukhda and hears the phone being slammed from the other side.
The filmmaker does not believe what he has just heard. This is bad. This is really bad. It’s like someone hurled a bunch of abuses at him. How could he? The phone rings again. The lyricist is back on the line.
“Ye kya bakwaas lyrics likhe hain tumne. Marwaoge kya sabko.” What crappy lyrics have you written? You are going to get all of us in trouble. The filmmaker is fuming.
“Arre director sahib, aage ki line bhi to sunlo.” Oh director sahib, please listen to the rest of the lines.
He sings the rest of the mukhda. The filmmaker breathes a sigh of relief. It’s not so bad once you hear the entire mukhda.
The day of the shoot arrives. The lead actress is paired with the supporting actress for the dance sequence. The supporting actress is really nervous since she has no moves other than her facial expressions. The director notices this pretty quickly.
“Arre Saroj ji zara inke dance moves theek karwaiye.” Saroj ji, please correct her dance moves. The choreographer starts working on the supporting actress but it’s not easy. How do you teach an old dog new tricks?
“Subhash ji, inko dance sikhane mein bahut time lag jayega. Saara set tayyaar hai, saare extras aa chuke hain. Kya kiya jaaye.” Subhash ji, it will take a long time to teach her to dance. We have the shot ready and all the extra dancers are here too. What do we do?
She has a worried look on her face. The filmmaker looks back at her with a winning smile. “Ek kaam karte hain. Camera inke sirf expressions capture karega. Iss liye inka closeup shoot lenge aur dance ke liye Madhuri par focus karenge.” Let’s do this. Let’s capture only her expressions when she sings. When Madhuri sings, we will focus on her dance.
Anand Bakshi wrote the lyrics for the song Choli ke peeche in the film Khalnayak. Subhash Ghai directed the film and the music was composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal. The playback for the song was provided by Ila Arun and Alka Yagnik. The song was picturized on Madhuri Dixit, Neena Gupta, and Sanjay Dutt.
Subhash Ghai was hunting for shoot locations in Mt. Abu and heard a small kid play a tune. He liked it so much that he recorded it. He felt that this song deserved a folk music treatment and recalled the recorded tune. He played it back to Laxmi-Pyare and that resulted in the refrain “kuk kuk kuk” in the song.
As per Subhash Ghai’s description of the situation, he wanted the lyrics to be such that they were rolling out of a villain’s tongue. He did not expect what Anand Bakshi would come back with. As soon as he went through the first line of mukhda, Subhash Ghai felt that he had gone too far, but after listening to the rest of the song, he was convinced that the lyrics weren’t that vulgar.
Anand Bakshi is known for the speed of writing lyrics. He turned around the song in just that one evening. He defended his rapid style of lyric writing with a saying - “If you take five minutes to bathe and I take 30 minutes, it is not necessary that I have bathed better!”
During recording, Alka Yagnik wasn’t even aware of the first line of the mukhda. Her lines started with Choli mein dil hai mera. She thought those lines were quite innocuous. After hearing the entire song, she felt that the song was on the naughty side but in no way can be considered vulgar.
The picturization of the song was to be on Madhuri Dixit and Neena Gupta. Subhash Ghai felt that Neena’s expressions spoke louder than words. That was the whole reason for giving her the initial sensual line in Ilia Arun’s voice. Unfortunately, she was not much of a dancer even though Saroj Khan spent several hours training her. Eventually, they decided to focus on her expressions when she was singing and switch to Madhuri when it came to the actual dance.
There is an incident recounted by the crew. On the day of the shooting, Neena Gupta got dressed in Rajasthani attire and walked into the set. She was ready to go. Subhash Ghai looked at her and felt something was missing. He shouted to the costume designer "Khuch Bharo". The next thing, the costume crew worked with Neena Gupta and made sure she came out with a heavily padded bra.
This song was a great success. The Khalnayak soundtrack album sold 10 million copies in the first week itself, making it one of the year's best-selling Bollywood soundtrack albums. Both Alka Yagnik and Ila Arun won the Filmfare Best Female Playback Singer award for Choli ke peeche. Anand Bakshi was nominated for Filmfare Best Lyrics for the same song and Laxmikant Pyarelal were nominated for the film’s overall music.
Singer: Alka Yagnik, Ila Arun
Music: Laxmikant Pyarelal
*ing: Madhuri Dixit, Neena Gupta, Sanjay Dutt
Lyrics: Anand Bakshi
Director: Subhash Ghai
Film: Khal Nayak (1993)