‘WHEN I started with “Humne dekhi hai” [Khamoshi, 1970], it was a different phase for me,’ Gulzar, the celebrated lyricist of Dil Se, says in an exclusive chat with the authors. ‘I gained confidence. I liberated myself, I started using abstract words. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had the courage to write lyrics like “Chand katora liye bhikaran raat (Mere Apne, 1971). My next phase of writing, in my opinion, was with Rahman and Mani Ratnam. Mani Ratnam is important because that’s where Sufiana begins. You find a plethora of Sufiana thoughts, which bring with them the flavour of the north. I feel I was lucky to have met them both.’
In terms of the quality of music and the innovative way the songs were shot, ‘Chaiyya chaiyya’, ‘Satrangi re’, ‘Dil se re’ (the title track) and ‘Jiya jale’ will rank in the category of the best video albums. ‘Aye ajnabee’ is an exception. The song is played on two different occasions in the film, both of them in the background, as a motif. The first time around, Amarkant Verma (Shah Rukh Khan) narrates, on a radio show, the story of a strange encounter with a woman in a black shawl one stormy night at a nondescript railway station somewhere in the north-east. As he recounts his story in a rather animated manner, the song breaks out on the radio. It runs in the background with Shah Rukh Khan’s narrative in the foreground as the predominant track.
The song is heard a second time on the radio when the anchor, Amar, plays it on popular demand. The heroine, Meghna (Manisha Koirala), hears it as she and her comrades prepare to launch a terrorist assault on Republic Day. Here again the song is secondary to the tension in the room as the anarchists go about their destructive plan. The song on the radio distracts Meghna and pulls her towards the radio set. She briefly turns it off but cannot resist the urge to turn it back on. The song was split into two parts to support the line ‘Tukdon me jee rahi hoon’. ‘This was Mani sir’s idea,’ Gulzar says.
The absence of an exclusive picturization meant that it did not get the support of visual excellence that accompanied the other tracks. ‘Visually, the song had a limitation because it was playing on the radio. Its lyrics and tune had to sustain the song,’ Gulzar points out. Incidentally, all the songs in the film were written to tunes that already existed. With Rahman I have always written to tunes.’
‘Aye ajnabee’, as all tracks of Dil Se, sounds like songs of the 1970s in that the instruments and arrangement do not have a synthetic feel. The most prominent aspect of the accompanying instruments in this song is the percussion. Using drums, the thumba and other acoustic instruments, A.R. Rahman succeeds in giving the score the desired ‘hollow’ effect, consistent with the fact that the boy has fallen in love with the girl at first sight and knows nothing about her. His subsequent meetings with her only increase the mystique element.
Ustad Ali Abkar Khan observed that the tune of ‘Aye ajnabee’ was based on Shankar–Jaikishan’s creation ‘Manzil wahi hai pyar ki, rahi badal gaye’ from the film Katputli (1957). There is undoubtedly a similarity in the first line. But the song changes course and traverses a radically different path as it progresses. Extending over three octaves, it begins with the feel of Raga Patdeep, Rahman creating the mood with four notes of the raga. However, within the mukhra itself, Rahman steps outside the domain of the raga, using the notes in a delightful manner. Another song which may have been inspired by the S–J song under question is Laxmikant–Pyarelal creation ‘Aur nahin bas aur nahin’ from their blockbuster Roti Kapda aur Makaan (1974).
Udit Narayan made his humble debut for Kathmandu radio station as a staff artist. But long before ‘Aye ajnabee’, he had already scaled superstardom as the voice of all leading stars. For Mahalaxmi Iyer, this was her debut.
The metre of the refrain is spaced out with the three words, ‘Jee rahi hai’, spread across eight bars. This helps enhance the mood of the dangerous desire for the unknown. According to Gulzar, the impact of the tune and the feel of distance and the enigma created in the phrase ‘Tum tukdon me kahin jee rahi ho, main tukdon me kahin jee raha hoon’ is noteworthy. Mahalaxmi Iyer’s piece, ‘Pakhi pakhi pardesi’, branches out to give the feel of a song within a song, symbolic of how divergent the destinies of Amar and Meghna are from one another. She tries her best to throw him out of her life as she cannot take him along with her on her predestined path. ‘Pakhi pakhi pardesi’ is her ardent plea to him to leave her.
Gulzar improvised with the phrase, ‘Pakhi pakhi pardesi’, the vernacular original of which one gets to hear in one of the scenes in the film. Gulzar says, ‘Pakhi is a Hindi and Bangla word. They wanted a chorus sound in the middle of the song that gives a feeling of flight. Pardesi jo chala jata hai and pakhi jo ud jata hai. Secondly, the phrase “Pakhi pakhi pardesi” sounds like cranes flying in a formation.’
The quest for the unknown is further augmented in the antara. The first two lines are soft-contoured and caress the notes gently, till, in the next two lines, the song reaches a crescendo with Rahman shifting to the higher octave. In a masterful manner, using a tune similar to the third line of the mukhra as the joiner between the antara and the mukhra, Rahman completes the circle. Technically, with many inflexions and surprises built in, it is probably one of the most difficult songs to have been created in the 1990s. The use of the reverb is effective too, especially in the higher octave, and gives the tune resonance. This is not a song which needs to grow on you. It hits you straightaway.
Each track of the film stands out as distinct from the other. Like a mother who dresses up her daughter for the big occasion, Rahman travelled from north-east to Ladakh to Kerala scouring for different musical elements that would give his composition a unique touch. From the Malayalam lyrics in ‘Jiya jale’ (a Lata solo) to the eerie wail of ‘Mujhe maut ki gode mein sone de’ to the irresistible rhythm of ‘Chhaiyya chhaiyya’ to the death scream in the title track (rendered by Rahman himself) amidst scenes of horrific destruction in the background, Rahman outdoes himself after his phenomenal debut in Roja.
The makers of this exceptional audio-visual share a few insights. ‘In “Jiye jale”, the Malayalam lyrics are part of Malayalam folk just like “Pantha bhaat e tatka begun” (Namkeen) or “Chappa Chappa charkha chale” (Maachis). These are musical usages of sound. Using the phonetics, basically. Rahman used Malayalam lyrics in the interlude music which I thought was very innovative,’ says Gulzar. In his conversations with Nasreen Munni Kabir, Rahman says, ‘Mani Ratnam told me that he intended to shoot the song in Kerala. This gave me the idea … the words are from a wedding song.’ Gulzar reveals, ‘“Satrangi” denotes seven stages of love starting with infatuation and ending with junoon. Which is where the thought of Ghalib’s “Ishq par zor nahi” becomes relevant.’
Unlike its predecessors, Roja and Bombay, Dil Se failed at the box office. This is not surprising given its messy script and illogical narrative. But Rahman’s music, characterized by a wholesomeness that captures the mindspace of the listeners on a stand-alone basis, has helped the film and the song stay in popular memory.