‘Mani Ratnam couldn’t understand what Gulzar had written’: When Farah Khan called Javed Akhtar to explain Dil Se song

“We’d wait for days for him to write two lines and give it to us. Javed uncle can procrastinate. He can chat about anything but do his homework,” said Farah Khan on the Take 2 podcast. But she revealed the quickest song he got from Javed was “Dard-e-Disco”, thanks to her unique yet accurate brief to him.

“When we were doing ‘Dard-E-Disco,’ my only brief to him was: ‘Just write like Gulzar sahab.’ And within five minutes, he’d written ‘Dard-E-Disco’. Javed uncle said, ‘Achha, Gulzar sahab jaisa likhna hai? Abhi likhta hu. (Oh, I’ve to write like Gulzar? Let me do that right away). If you listen to ‘Dard-E-Disco,’ it’s all written like Gulzar sahab,” pointed out Farah.

That’s not the only time Farah Khan has invoked Gulzar in front of his fellow poet and lyricist, Javed Akhtar. Back in 1999, when she was choreographing another song, the cult contemporary dance of “Satrangi Re” in Mani Ratnam’s romantic drama Dil Se.., she couldn’t decipher Gulzar’s lyrics which were steeped in pure Urdu. The song featured Shah Rukh Khan and Manisha Koirala.

“The funniest part was Gulzar sahab had written this part of the song that described the seven stages of love. Mani sir doesn’t know Hindi, so he was asking us. We couldn’t understand what’s written, so I used to call up Javed uncle and say, ‘Ye kya likha hai, mujhe explain karo’ (Please explain what’s written to me). ‘Halka-halka uns hua. What’s uns (affection)?,” recalled Farah.

Earlier this year, on the podcast Cyrus Says, Javed Akhtar recalled another brief Farah Khan gave him for “Dard-E-Disco.” “Farah told me that ‘Javed uncle I want a song in which any line does not have meaning because the whole situation is absurd.’ I realized for the first time that to write gibberish is very difficult.  I’m happy that it was fairly meaningless,” said Javed.

Also Read — SRK@60: How Shah Rukh Khan’s songs taught India to fall in love

“Dard-E-Disco” comes in Om Shanti Om when a vane, new-age star Om Kapoor (Shah Rukh Khan) demands that the makers of his next film do a dream sequence with his wheelchair-bound character. He also mentions that he’s already done a “dard bhari qawwali” (pained qawwali), referring to the popular track “Tumse Milke Dilka Jo Haal” from Farah and Shah Rukh’s previous hit collaboration, Main Hoon Na (2004).

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