In conversation with Niranjan Iyengar,the man behind recent hits Alvida,Ek Ghadi

The sombre,old world charm of D-Day‘s Ek ghadi,was penned while Iyengar was shopping for swimming trunks at a mall in Ahmedabad.

“While I was deciding between Adidas and Nike,the line came to me,Tere lab pe mere hone ka nishaana baaki hai… and within 40 minutes,I had finished writing the song. Then I texted Nikhil Advani and Shankar Mahadevan (of composer trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy),” he recalls sitting in his Bandra apartment.

A few minutes before the start of the interview,Niranjan Iyengar was talking to Karan Johar on the phone,giving him a pep-talk before the filmmaker makes his acting debut in Anurag Kashyap’s Bombay Velvet.

“He’s nervous,” he says,about his longtime friend who later turned collaborator in films such as Kal Ho Na Ho,My Name is Khan and Student of the Year,among other Dharma Productions.

Iyengar’s is a story without struggles,he admits,at least at a broader,Bollywood level.

As a journalist with a film magazine in the ’90s,he was friends with Karan Johar and fashion designer Manish Malhotra at a time when they were also starting out.

He knew Shah Rukh Khan,Aamir Khan and Karisma Kapoor even before they became stars,and is modest about his achievements as a dialogue and lyric writer in Bollywood.

“I had no burning desire to be a dialogue writer,screenwriter or lyricist. My career happened because I started working with friends. I wrote a book on Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham for Karan Johar and till then I had no idea that I was going to do this forever,” he says.

Iyengar is well aware of the popular perception that associates him with Karan Johar’s production house,although he doesn’t feel it represents his body of work.

Judging by the good response for D-Day,a film far removed in style from Karan Johar’s productions,he hopes his work will be better appreciated.

“I had also done Jism,Paap and Rog with Pooja Bhatt,a Rumi Jaffrey comedy,Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion and Heroine,but unfortunately they never came to the fore. Karan’s movies are large,and they did very well,” he says,adding,“Now,I am getting a sense that people have woken up to the fact that I even work outside Dharma,and I am hoping now it should evolve into something more concrete.”

Currently,he is working on Sony’s upcoming serial Jee Le Zara and he has penned a portion of the soon-to-be-aired,24.

He attributes his lyrics writing skills to his nurturing in music. As a devout follower of Indian classical and Sufi music — he is a trained singer too — it naturally translates into writing such songs.

It is not surprising that Iyengar’s most memorable works are songs that fall in that zone,such as songs from My Name Is Khan,Kurbaan and D-Day.

But he is alert not to let himself get slotted. It makes him attempt an item song like Halkat jawaani or a Western-inclined ballad like Alvida,even if that pushes him off his comfort zone.

“Halkat jawaani took the mickey out of me because that’s not a zone I can think in. But I wrote it in rebellion to being typecast as a Sufi writer,” he says.

“Alvida posed a challenge in its structure,and the metric unfamiliarity of the dummy lyrics he had been given. Loy had originally written it in English,so I had to erase the original from my head and recreate it,” says the 44-year-old.

He thinks of lyrics as a tool that augment a song,working at subliminal rather than at a visceral level.

“A melody of a song makes it an instant success but what really helps the song survive are its lyrics. I always write with my eyes on that,” he says.

Iyengar attaches a similar philosophy to the function of dialogues in films. His knack for languages — he also knows Marathi,Gujarati,Telugu and Tamil — helps him plunge headlong into the heart of a Hindi film without difficulty,and professionally,he is flexible enough to be able to mould himself as per different frameworks.