Javed Akhtar recalls writing ‘Tum Ko Dekha’ in nine minutes, well past midnight, after he was down ‘eight or nine pegs’

Javed Akhtar said that his wife, Shabana Azmi, often jokes that if his producers knew how long he takes to write songs, they wouldn't pay him.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | Updated: June 13, 2023 12:33 PM IST

3 min read

Javed Akhtar attends an event.

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Lyricist-writer Javed Akhtar said that he has written a few film songs in under 10 minutes, but he is convinced that he wrote one massively popular track in nine minutes, and revealed the interesting story behind why he is so sure of this. He said that his wife, actor Shabana Azmi often jokes that if producers knew how long he takes to write songs, they’d refuse to pay him.

At a recent FICCI event in Kolkata, Javed Akhtar recalled, “I have written a handful of songs in under 10 minutes. After Silsila, Yash Chopra’s fourth assistant came to me and requested that I write the songs for his film. Of course, he didn’t have any money, but I agreed. I wrote the songs, but because I was working for free, one remained incomplete. That poor guy would come over every evening and ask for the song, and in those days, I used to drink…”

Also read | When Shabana Azmi came to receive a hungover Javed Akhtar at the airport, didn’t know he’d ‘quit drinking’ the night before

He continued, “Every evening, we’d drink and chit-chat and by 2 am, we’d decided that we would finish the song tomorrow. I kept delaying it, then one day, the poor guy asked again. This was past midnight, after the eighth or ninth peg, I asked for a piece of paper and a pen, and decided to get it over with. The reason why I know for sure that I wrote that song in nine minutes is because he had to catch the last train, so kept looking at his watch. I finished it in nine minutes and handed it over to him. Jagjit Singh sang the song, it was ‘Tum Ko Dekha To Yeh Khayal Aaya’.”

As the crowd let out an audible gasp, Javed continued, “It was written at perhaps 12:30 in the night, after eight or nine pegs, in nine minutes…” The song appeared in the film Saath Saath, starring Farooq Shaikh, Deepti Naval, Satish Shah and Neena Gupta. The soundtrack for the film, which included songs such as “Yu Zindagi Ki Raah Mein” and “Ye Tera Ghar Ye Mera Ghar,” was composed by Kuldeep Singh, who was best known for his ghazals.

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