Chhaayaageet #129 - “I will listen to the songs you write, but won’t see them.”
It’s a typical hot afternoon in Bombay. The deputy executive editor of the Hindustan Times has traveled into the city from Delhi, and is challenged to find an address in Juhu, a suburb of Bombay, where the filmwallahs have their posh houses and swanky offices.
For someone from Delhi, the heat and the humidity can be uncomfortable, but not for him. His work has taken him to the remote villages from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, covering insurgencies, land battles and society’s fault lines. He’s felt a lot more heat covering hard hitting stories with courage and grit.
After a few times stopping the taxi asking the locals for directions, he reaches the building which houses the offices of Vishesh Films. He takes the lift to the fourth floor and is ushered into the filmmaker’s office. It is a small room with two couches and a treadmill on one side.
Journalism teaches you not to be in awe of big names. He isn’t. He is meeting the filmmaker to do some research for his first book. It is about the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 from Kathmandu to Delhi on Christmas Eve a couple of years back. He wants to tell the gut wrenching story of the events inside the plane during the 173 hours of captivity.
“Pizza?”, the filmmaker asks him, realizing that the journalist must not have eaten.
That would be welcome. Pizza is ordered. The conversation commences. While making small talk in the middle of the discussion, the journalist tells the filmmaker, “I also write songs.” Little did he know, that these four innocuous words would change the trajectory of his life.
The filmmaker is intrigued. “Let’s hear something”, he says.
The journalist remembers a song he had written and composed in his college days in Nainital. He starts tapping his black bag, mouthing the words, “Khwabon ki ye zameen hai, yaadon ka aasmaan…” This land of dreams and a sky full of memories, something to that effect.
Midway through the song, the filmmaker jumps off the couch, and standing in the middle of the room, proclaims to no one in particular, “Hit hai”. It’s a hit.
The journalist stops abruptly. He can’t believe it. These Bollywood people are crazy, he thinks to himself.
“We are currently working on a film. Why don’t you write a song for that?”, the filmmaker pulls the thread on that detour in the conversation.
The journalist pauses to consider the irony in that statement. Here he is doing research for a book on a terrorist event, and now they are talking about him writing a romantic song for a Hindi film. Can two things be any further apart from each other? Is this being said in jest? He realizes the filmmaker is serious.
"Come and join our music sitting", the filmmaker takes it up a notch.
At the sitting, the journalist learns a thing or two about how songs are made. The tune of the song is made first and the lyricist has to find the right words to fit to the tune. He takes up the challenge to write a song. It turns out to be a lot more frustrating than he had thought. He is just not able to do it. For the first time in his life, he feels like a failure even before he has started. The words are just not coming. The composer realizes the journalist’s predicament.
“Take a few days, think about it. It will come to you”, he provides some encouraging words to soothe the bruised ego. There’s no need to feel like a failure. It's a creative process. No one has escaped it.
In the next couple of days, the journalist goes about the city in a taxi doing research for his book. After lunch, he boards a taxi to his destination. His brain starts playing the tune. A few words start to appear in his mind. It’s starting to make sense. In a hurry he takes out the restaurant food bill from his pocket and starts scribbling on the back side of the bill.
He meets the filmmaker the following day and reads out the lyrics of the song to him. The filmmaker is ecstatic.
Filming completes. The film is also the launch of a new hero. It is a big moment for the journalist. His first song on the silver screen. Who would've thunk it? The promos of the song are out. He is excited for his family to hear and see the song.
The middle class family are far from impressed. His father, a geologist in ONGC (Oil & Natural Gas Corporation) and a writer himself, is dejected. It just so happens that the film is an erotic thriller and for a conservative middle class family the filming of the song is a bit too bold. They wonder, alas, what has our son lent the family name to? He tells the son, “I will listen to the songs you write, but won’t see them.”
Neelesh Misra, an award winning journalist, wrote the lyrics of the song Jadu hai nasha hai for the film Jism (2003), produced by Pooja Bhatt, story by Mahesh Bhatt, directed by Amit Saxena and music scored by MM Keeravani (alias MM Kreem, and composer of the Oscar and Golden Globe winning song Naatu Naatu for the film RRR). The song is filmed on Bipasha Basu and John Abraham, the latter making his debut. Shreya Ghoshal provides the playback. The duet version is sung by Shreya Ghoshal and Shaan.
Jism is an erotic thriller based on the 1981 Lawrence Kasdan film Body Heat. It is considered to be the first film of this genre in Hindi cinema. It made waves for being daringly different.
Shreya Ghoshal won the Filmfare award for Best Female Playback Singer for the song Jadu hai nasha hai. Bipasha Basu earned a nomination for Best Performance in a Negative Role, while John Abraham earned a nomination for Best Male Debut.
Neelesh Misra’s journey in Hindi cinema started with this song. He wrote another song, Chalo tumko lekar chalein in the same film. He went on to write other songs, and also collaborated with Kabir Khan to co-write the script and screenplay of Ek Tha Tiger for Yash Raj Films.
Enjoy Shreya Ghoshal’s beautiful live rendition of this song.
Lyrics: Neelesh Misra
Music: MM Keeravani (MM Kreem)
Singers: Shreya Ghoshal (solo), Shaan (duet)
*ing: Bipasha Basu, John Abraham
Director: Amit Saxena
Story: Mahesh Bhatt
Producer: Pooja Bhatt
Film: Jism (2003)