Chhaayaageet #95 - “We will be there as long as it takes to compose all the songs.”
He has just finished writing the script. It is 60 pages long. Not too shabby. This is the least one can expect from the son of a famous writer. But he is also planning to direct his debut movie. Quite a big burden on those young shoulders.
This is his attempt to honestly portray the westernized urban youth of Mumbai. Most Hindi films tend to dramatize events and have heavy dialogues. Characters don't speak like that in real life. Hence, he has written write all the dialogues himself. He could have always approached his father to write and that would be powerful but that would be in a different language. He decides to write in the language he knows. It is basically Hindi but with a lot of English in it.
“Pa, I am thinking about signing up a composer. The new composer from the South is really popular these days. What do you think about him?” He decides to consult his father. “He is incredibly talented but I am not sure his temperament and your temperament will match.” His father is a brutally honest person. Based on father’s response, he keeps the search for the composer open.
He decides he wants someone who is as hungry and as young as himself. He has met these three talented guys in the past although never all at once. He is acquainted with their talent through their songs and music in recent films.
One of them is a vocalist and knows to play the veena. He has found his early success in Carnatic music and has earned laurels in the South. The other two are hardcore musicians well-versed in the western style of music using guitar, piano, and harmonica. They are both quite in demand in the ad community through the composition of their jingles. They all came together at the insistence of a well-known filmmaker to compose music for his film that unfortunately did not see the light of day. But that led to other films which were fairly successful and that's how the young filmmaker has heard them.
The trio of composers arrives at the script narration. “Man, this script is about these three young guys who are randomly hanging around doing nothing. They are all just sitting around each other and suddenly they start laughing at each other.” The filmmaker is being as casual as he can as per his brand. The composer trio look at each other with puzzled looks. One of them blurts out. “We can completely relate to this.” And they all break into a burst of laughter. After all, they all belong to the same generation.
They all agree to work with the rookie filmmaker. Now it's time to start composing the songs. “Let’s go to our house in Khandala. We will be away from all the commotion of the city.” The filmmaker knows that location has provided much solace for his father to write many of his hit film screenplays.
“How many days should we plan to be there?” One of the composers wants to let his mother know how long he will be out of town. “We will be there as long as it takes to compose all the songs.” The composer informs his mother that he will be gone for 10 days.
The five of them including the filmmaker’s eminent father pack their bags for a trip to Khandala. The father is to pen the lyrics. While he is writing, the rest are jamming in the back of the house. There is constant humor and laughter as they work together. In between jamming sessions, they decide to sit on a swing in the backyard with the guitar and try to come up with different compositions.
The title song lyrics are almost there. His father goes through them. But there is a problem. There is the word Chamkeelay (Shining) in it. The director's brand is all about conversational Hindi or Hinglish, so this word stands out sorely as a misfit. No urban youth of Mumbai would ever use this word.“Pa, it feels like a detergent ad with the word chamkeelay in it. Can we substitute it?” The father is smart and has seen the world over the years. “Don’t worry son. Nobody will care about this once the song is a big hit. It’s important that as ambassadors of music we bring these forgotten words to the limelight so they can be part of the contemporary.” Nobody has ever explained it like that. The filmmaker feels good that the songs will uplift the vocabulary of the society.
The composition for the title song is still not there yet. They have a base guitar piece that is planned for another song. “Dumm Dumm Dum Dum”
It is morning and the vocalist composer decides to hit the washroom. For some reason, that guitar piece has been playing over and over again in his mind. He just can’t brush it off. He has his towel over his neck and is busy brushing his teeth. In the meantime, the tune keeps doing circles in his head. He decides not to fight it.
Suddenly he pauses brushing. He is on to something.
He comes out of the washroom to the back of the room where everybody is sitting. He stands there excited with his brush still in his hand, the towel still wrapped around his neck and toothpaste foam smeared all over his lips. Everyone senses an Archimedes moment from him.
He sings the first line of the title song along with the guitar tune. Eureka!
Shankar-Ehsan-Loy provided the composition for the song Dil chahta hai in the movie Dil Chahta Hai directed & written by Farhan Akhtar. The song lyrics were penned by Farhan’s father, Javed Akhtar, and sung by Shankar Mahadevan and Clinton Cerejo. Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsan Noorani, and Loy Mendonsa were in the music circles doing their own thing until Mukul Anand decided to pull in Ehsaan for his movie, Dus. Ehsaan agreed to do the movie only if Shankar and Loy were also involved in the composition. The film remained incomplete after Mukul Anand's death, though the album was released later in 1999. After Dus, they composed music for a couple of films like Rockford and Bhopal Express, but all of them went unnoticed. Their entry to mainstream cinema was with Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Mission Kashmir, which was a musical hit and earned the trio a place in the Bollywood film industry.
The turning point of their career as music directors though was Dil Chahta Hai, which was the debut film of Farhan Akhtar as a director. Initially, A. R. Rahman was considered to do the music, but Farhan decided to look for someone else for compatibility reasons. The trio composed the title track for the film along with the rest of the songs, which Farhan liked. The film won wide critical acclaim and went on to attain cult status among audiences. This marked the beginning of the trio's friendship with Farhan Akhtar and long-term association with his company, Excel Entertainments.
Farhan refers to his writing in Dil Chahta Hai as an honest portrayal of Westernized urban youth in Mumbai. Prior to Dil Chahta Hai, most Hindi movies tended to dramatize events and use heavy dialogues typically not spoken by normal people. He didn't want any of the characters to speak a language that he was not familiar with. So he wrote in Hindi that he knew best which had a lot of English in it.
Dil Chahta Hai is considered to be pathbreaking and one of the best soundtracks to have emerged in contemporary Indian music. The soundtrack stayed away from traditional Bollywood sounds and instead set a new standard for edgy, rock-influenced sounds.
Farhan Akhtar originally wrote the movie by casting Akshaye Khanna, Hrithik Roshan, and Saif Ali Khan. When Hrithik Roshan turned the role down, it went to Abhishek Bachchan. After Abhishek's refusal, Farhan approached Aamir Khan who was going through a lean phase at the time. Aamir Khan insisted on playing the lead role which Akshaye Khanna agreed to swap with him.
A recipient of several accolades, Dil Chahta Hai won 2 awards at the 49th National Film Awards. At the 47th Filmfare Awards, the film received 13 nominations, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Music Director, and won 7 awards, including Best Film (Critics) and Best Supporting Actor, and Best Comedian.
Singer: Shankar Mahadevan, Clinton Cerejo
Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
Lyrics: Javed Akhtar
*ing: Aamir Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Saif Ali Khan
Director: Farhan Akhtar
Film: Dil Chahta Hai (2001)