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Over the years, Shah Rukh Khan has done a lot of films and apart from his acting skills, the actor is known for giving a unique touch to his songs. Similarly, when Chaiyya Chaiyya was released, the song became a rage among people and still, it is one of the most loved songs. A few years back, writer and lyricist Gulzar shared an interesting story about the song about how SRK tricked Mani Ratnam to perform on the song.
For the unversed, the song is from the 1998 movie Dil Se which featured SRK and Manisha Koirala in the lead roles. Sung by Sukhwinder Singh and Sapna Awasth, it was inspired by a Sufi song called Thaiyya Thaiyya by Bulleh Shah.
Back in 2017, Gulzar in an event recalled an interesting story behind Chaiyya Chaiyya and shared that when Shah Rukh Khan first heard the lyrics he didn’t want to perform it with fakirs in the background. Later the superstar tricked Mani Ratnam by saying that the song had a deep poem due to which he wanted to dance to it himself.
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It was Gulzar who knew Shah Rukh Khan actually wanted to dance on Chaiyya Chaiyya. He told Deccan Chronicle, “Mani asked me if it is very high poetry, and I said yes,” Gulzar says. “And this is how SRK tricked Mani and fulfilled his wish of dancing to the tune of Chaiyya Chaiyya, which became a hit number.”
The lyricist even made a revelation about the song Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire, saying that the song wasn’t originally planned for the Danny Boyle film. He said, “We saw the whole world dancing to the tunes of Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire, but hardly anybody knows that the song was not originally written for the film.”
Gulzar adds, “I had written Jai Ho first for Subhash Ghai’s Yuvvraaj. But he thought the language of the song was too refined for the situations in the film. So I wrote another song for the film. Then, one day, AR Rahman called Ghai up to ask if he’s really not using the song. When he said no, I made some changes and additions to the song, to match it with Slumdog Millionaire’s script and characters, and the story behind it.”
Stay tuned to Koimoi for more throwback stories.
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