Photo: R.V. Moorthy

The film’s song, “Hum To Aise Hain Bhaiyya”, sung by Sunidhi Chauhan, Shreya Ghoshal, Swanand Kirkire and Pranab Biswas, now playing on the film’s promos, is already catching music lovers’ attention.

In total, there are five songs in the film. “Zara Gungunalein Chalo” is sung by Babul Supriyo and Mahalaxmi Iyer while Shubha Mudgal and Meeta Vashisht sing the title song. A naughty, romantic number, “Ik Teekhi Teekhi Si Ladki” is sung by KK and Shreya Ghoshal. In “Ehi Thaiyaa Motiya”,

Rekha Bhardwaj has lent her voice while Sonu Nigam, KK, Sunidhi Chauhan and Shreya Ghoshal sing the wedding number, “Kachchi Kaliyaan”.

Says Moitra, whose debut non-film album “Mann Ke Manjeere” and “Ab Ke Sawan” won him many admirers, “I am very choosy when it comes to working for a specific film. And I take my own time in making my music because I can afford to do so. Music for me is not my bread and butter. It is my advertising agency that feeds me. Music is my hobby.”

He says that for “Laga Chunari…” he worked on its script and sat with almost all actors and singers. “‘Laga Chunari’ is the introductory song in the film. Through this, all characters in the film are introduced. I had to show that the actors in the film are all from a united middle class family from Banaras and that sisters Rani Mukerji and Konkona Sen are bubbly, and are very dear to their mother (Jaya Bachchan ).”

Because of the song, he says, “we saved time that would have been spent in dialogues introducing these characters.” Before making the music for this and other songs, “I involved myself in the film from the word ‘go’. I discussed the scenes at length with Pradeep.”

Agreed that his music is euphonic but he is often accused of lifting tunes from different sources and doing a cut-paste job in his compositions.

“I don’t care about what people say. What ultimately matters is whether people have liked it or not. A lot of veteran music directors have lifted from folk songs. I do take a piece of music from different sources but I modify it through my own knowledge of music. I don’t depend upon techno-music to sell my product. I openly say that I don’t belong to any school. I do what I know would be loved by the listeners,” he defends himself.

If Shubha Mudgal “never says no” to his songs, now he is even working with Shyam Benegal. He says delightedly, “I am scoring music for his film called ‘Mahadev’. While in my music for Sudhir’s Mishra’s ‘Khoya Khoya Chand’, you will find romance of the 1970s.”

Director : Music : Lyrics : Starring :  Pradeep Sarkar  Shantanu Moitra  Swanand Kirkire  Jaya Bachchan, Rani Mukherjee, Konkona Sen Sharma, Abhishek Bachchan, Kunal Kapoor, Anupam Kher

 

He was dressed in his trademark starched white kurta- pyjama, looking handsome and tranquil. I could not believe that I was having tea with him. My memory of that meeting is hazy .

Just staring I only remember how I forgot about the tea till he reminded me that it was getting cold. “Sharbat manga lete,” he joked. He came all the way to the main gate to see us off. I have seen my parents do that when we had guests over.

Somnath told me later that I had been gawking at him, but I guess he must be used to Gulzarstruck juveniles like me. I met him next when I was doing an album for my friend Nivedita. He was her mentor and would come to the studio and sit for hours listening to the compositions. This time I didn’t stare.

I discovered that Gulzar was fascinated by astronomy.. some thing I loved too. Our common interest forged a new bonding. We would discuss the cosmos, galaxies, star births and black holes.

Sharing all this with a poet was a magical experience.

Our addas continued even after the album was over. I would drop by at his house or call him up if I came across any interesting information on the cosmos.

Gradually I stopped calling him and would just land up at his house unannounced. During these meetings everything under the sun, except work, was discussed.

They were theraeupetic. Half an hour in his study would leave me completely refreshed.

I would always find him at his table, reading or writing, surrounded by a pile of books. Except for the low hum of the air conditioner, the room was quiet. His study reminded me of Alexandria’s ancient library.

Somewhere along the way, we managed to do a film, Yahaan. It was my first feature film with lyrics by Gulzar. Yet my magical moments with him are not related to cinema.

One day he called me up to say, “Yaar, suna tumne, Pluto beghar ho gaya?” He was commenting on the scientific community’s decision to evict Pluto from the list of planets. That afternoon I went to his house.

Happy birthday Both of us were sad for little Pluto. He read me a poem, which he had written on the occasion. I had my customary cup of tea. As I got up to leave, he hugged me and said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure Pluto is happy to be free at last.” That afternoon, I realised that I did not have anyone else with whom I could share the void I felt over Pluto’s departure. We felt as if someone very dear to us had departed forever.

Gulzar, who has been a part of so many great Hindi classics and has written some of the most memorable songs and touching poetry, could still mourn the loss of Pluto. That’s why he is who he is. Happy birthday Gulzar saab.

(The writer is a music composer)

Shantanu Moitra and Swanand Kirkire are Bollywood’s latest musical duo. Riding high on the success of Hazaron Khwahishen and Parineeta, they admit to a mysterious chemistry Sanjukta Sharma

A high point in Swanand Kirkire’s life in Mumbai was when he got a job with director Sudhir Mishra.

Moitra, a middle-class boy from Delhi, says, ‘I have to get a childlike glee out of making music, just as I do out of trekking, star-gazing’

At the National School of Drama (NSD), where he was training to be a director, Kirkire (top right) had tasted the heady hangover of parallel cinema. Mishra, to him, was somewhat of an idol. It was infinitely better than writing soaps for prime-time television or writing for himself. He discovered an air of dire purpose on the sets of Mishra’s Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi, none of the half-hearted milling around that he had experienced with television producers in the five years he had spent in Mumbai.

Actor Kay Kay Menon listened curiously. Then Sudhir Mishra did. Shantanu Moitra, having migrated from Delhi with the job of composing the music for the film, heard it last. Moitra and Kirkire got on to something that began to take a gravitas of its own; it was the emergence of a lyricist-composer duo that has spanned two films — Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi and Parineeta — in a matter of a few months, and to wide acclaim. Now, they have many more films in the offing.

Moitra — best known earlier for his quasi-classical, folksy composition in Aab ke Sawan and Mann Ke Manjire sung by Shubha Mudgal — says of Kirkire, “I’ve always believed that chemistry between two musicians or two people doesn’t happen by appointment. There’s a mystery to it and that’s what it was with Swanand. I was new to the city, all gung-ho about doing the music for this film. I was trying out many different things and then I realised, here’s this guy with raw talent in front of me.”

Kirkire has his own take on singing and writing songs with Moitra. “It is not that difficult if there’s an unspoken understanding with the composer. Our musical tastes and influences are similar, but that’s not all. It’s really the politics of it — our ideologies, our take on living and thinking match.”

Within the film industry, Kirkire and Moitra belong to a new coterie of filmmakers and musicians who have recently migrated from Delhi. Moitra’s first recording — an advertising jingle — happened quite by accident. One day, he had to replace a jingle-maker at the last moment for Pradeep Sarkar, who was then the creative director of the agency. “It’s just two lines, can you do it?” asked Sarkar, disdainful of a client servicing guy’s ability to sing. “What are the lines?” Moitra asked. Bole Mere Lips, I love Uncle Chipps, said Sarkar.

Filmmakers Pradeep and Soojit Sarkar, musicians Daniel B. George and Moitra quickly became part of a group who fed off each other creatively in Delhi. In the last couple of years, one by one, this group began to leave for Mumbai. Following in their footsteps, Moitra ended up composing the music for Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta to Kirkire’s lyrics.

Kirkire, having spent five years in television without fitting in, found a new camaraderie. His song, Raat Hamari Toh, written in his mind “inside a pitch dark room in my Indore house” impressed Sarkar and Vidhu Vinod Chopra enough to sign him on as a lyricist for Parineeta. The result reflects the sensibility that binds Moitra and Kirkire artistically — a sound, fresh by Hindi film standards, pulsing with melody and inner life, yet possessed of an undercurrent of emotional unease.

Kirkire thinks the best inspiration often comes from things you dislike. ‘I want to write for the paanwala, but not how they’re writing now’

Kirkire, 35, and Moitra, 37, have parents who are trained classical musicians. A chunk of Kirkire’s childhood was spent in the house of Kumar Gandharva in Indore, listening to his father and mother train as his disciples. Kirkire never embraced the fold himself — “I was not comfortable with the rigid guru-shishya tradition of classical music. But I used to sing, although never for a recording until Hazaron.”

Moitra’s parents, who lived in Varanasi and Lucknow, never encouraged him to be a musician because the family had already experienced the travails of high art.

“I was made to believe that there is a direct relation between poverty and classical music. After we moved to Delhi it was decided that I was going to be a professional.” But music was in Moitra’s blood. While working with Contract Advertising as a client servicing executive, he formed a Bengali band called Saptak in his Delhi neighbourhood, Chittaranjan Park, and continued to make his own brand of music — a mixture of folk and classical with influences as wide-ranging as Salil Choudhury, Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel — through the 90s.

Kirkire’s calling, on the other hand, was theatre. The decision to move to Mumbai was as natural for him as it is for most NSD graduates. “I am making my own film,” Kirkire says. “Music is often quite easy. It is a way of writing. Writing for Parineeta was my first real experience of thinking cinema — thinking characters and situations. It drives me further towards my own story on celluloid.” Essentially a Delhi guy, Kirkire admits that he is yet to give in to Mumbai’s professionalism, its survival mantras. “The best inspiration often comes from things that you dislike or hate,” he says.

Moitra also admits to the dichotomy, “The fear of the unknown still lingers within me. I’m yet to get out of my middle-class, Chittaranjan Park attitude. But strangely, Mumbai already inspires me, much like it inspires millions of others who have come here.” Moitra and Kirkire are now collaborating on Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s next project, Yagna.

In their doggedness to cling to a certain ideal, to make music “not by appointment”, but out of artistic chemistry, the Moitra-Kirkire duo is worth looking out for. They are self-consciously not here to write for the rickshawala and the paanwala. Moitra says, “I have to get a childlike glee out of making music, just as I do out of trekking and star-gazing. That’s why I’m wary of the filmi set-up which is all about churning.”

Kirkire adds, “I want to write for the paanwala, but not the way they are writing for him.”

In film industry terms, that would be interpreted as elitism. But going by their music, elitism is not such a bad thing.

Being a composer, how did you take time out to do photography so seriously?

I could take time out so easily because I have been a composer. Since I have quit a corporate job, I appreciate my freedom all the more today. It’s up to me to decide when I want to work and how much of work I wish to do. It’s my decision not to accept films and go off to Nagaland to shoot. Temperamentally, I have always been like that.

When was it that you chose photography over composing for a movie?

Neither am I God nor am I that selfless to leave a good film. I would certainly not leave 3 Idiots and Antaheen and do photography instead. Staying in Mumbai means enduring the pressures of the city and my profession. Fortunately, I’ve kept myself free from serious EMIs. My wife, Sarada, has also been a great support. She knows that I’m a compulsive traveller. My son, Shubham, is also very environmentally conscious. Once I return from a vacation, I have a slide show of the pictures I’ve taken. If all goes well, I will be off to Antarctica in September. I could have spent a lot of money and taken a chopper ride. But I didn’t want that. In fact, I’ll be going there as a cook on a Russian ice-breaker!

While most photographers want to shoot with stars, why have you consciously avoided the celebs for whom you compose?

Having worked in Bollywood, I feel that there is more to life than movies. For 3 Idiots, I was the location consultant for the shoot in Pangong Lake!

Your profession does lend itself to highs and lows. During a dull phase, have you ever considered photography as an alternative career?

During a dull phase, I can be in the system and crib about why my songs are not working or I’m not getting the right kind of movies. But the other option is to move away and channelise the energy elsewhere. Here Gulzar has been my inspiration. There was a time when he wasn’t writing for films at all. That’s when he immersed himself into literary activities. I’ve never seen him depressed and he has bounced back to give a Chhaiya Chhaiya. For me, it’s important to understand whether I have the skill to do something else for a living too. Over the years, I’ve realised that I could write, do photography, gardening or cook for a living.

What kind of a satisfaction does photography give that you don’t get while composing?

I can’t be detached while composing. I’ve to understand Rancho if I’ve to compose a Behti Hawa. With photography, I can detach from my subject.

How is life post the huge success of 3 Idiots?

Nothing has changed. But I know I’m a lucky guy. This year, I’ve been part of two soundtracks that have created history. Antaheen came at a time when things were not happening in Bengal in terms of melody. It opened new avenues. When people talk about doing a film that marries entertainment with serious commentary, my name will come up in the context of 3 Idiots. Yet, I’ve never had the mindset to immediately cash in on success. For me, less is more. When Ab Ke Sawan was a hit, I went trekking. In another 20 odd days, I’ll be off to Mizoram.

By what percentage has your remuneration shot up post the box office success?

I’ll no longer suffer from the Bengali middle-class hangover that prompts me to question: “Am I asking for too much money?”

Can Bengal afford a Shantanu Moitra now?

(Laughs) Only if I do it free of cost! A producer has to pay Rs 7 lac to Rs 8 lac to get a complete song.

So, only good relations can get you to compose for Bengal?

Yes and also on occasions where I know I will benefit. I am not here for charity. I know I benefited from Antaheen and I realise that there are certain feelings that can’t be quantified by money.

Have you considered coming up with a private album?

I have a strong desire to do an album with Swanand Kirkire. It’s liberating to score for a private album. Bollywood gives me the brand, private albums give me freedom.