37 Years of Mr India: Javed Akhtar wrote gibberish lines in ‘Hawa Hawai’ to hit back at a distributor who told Boney Kapoor, “Gaane mat likhwana Javed se. Woh gaano mein poetry likh deta hai”

By Fenil Seta -

May 29, 2024 - 3:46 PM IST

The much-loved film Mr India (1987) completed 37 years on May 25. Starring Anil Kapoor, Sridevi and Amrish Puri, the film has a huge fan base, thanks to the clean humour, imaginative storyline and special effects. The songs also are remembered even today with 'Hawa Hawai' being a favourite of people of all ages. The song begins with gibberish lines and many of you must have wondered what the relevance of it was. It turns out that Javed Akhtar added those words to hit back at a distributor.

37 Years of Mr India: Javed Akhtar wrote gibberish lines in ‘Hawa Hawai’ to hit back at a distributor who told Boney Kapoor, “Gaane mat likhwana Javed se. Woh gaano mein poetry likh deta hai”

Javed Akhtar at the stage show ‘Main Koi Aisa Geet Gaaon’ revealed, “In both Silsila (1981) and Saath Saath (1982), the songs (that I wrote) were hits and in both movies, the characters were poets. Hence, the songs had to be of a particular kind. Meanwhile, Boney Kapoor was about to start shooting for Mr India. A distributor told him, ‘Acha hua tumne Javed Akhtar se script le li. Lekin gaane mat likhwana usse. Woh gaano mein poetry likh deta hai!’. Now you tell me, gaanon mein aadmi poetry na likhe toh kya physics, chemistry, trigonometry…kya likhe?’!”

Javed Akhtar raised laughs as he said, “I was sure that yeh ilzaam se mujhe bahar nikalna padega. Since the character (of Seema, played by Sridevi) was a bit bizarre, I wrote gibberish in the first two lines of ‘Hawa Hawai’. Those lines are meaningless and just sound nice.”

But this led to some issues. “I got stuck in the second line. I got the rhyming word. Above, it was ‘King Kong’ and I rhymed it with ‘Ping Pong’. But I wanted one more word, of three syllables. I just couldn’t think of any word,” he said.

Javed Akhtar shocked patrons as he revealed, “I reached the recording studio. Kavita Krishnamurthy ji, the singer, had arrived aur meri second line complete nahin thi. At this point, Ashok Thakeria, who produced Beta (1992), came to meet Boney Kapoor. I shook hands with him. I read a word on his shirt’s pocket, ‘Mombasa’. Yehi toh main dhoond raha tha! That’s how ‘Mombasa’ got added into the song.”

He ended the trivia by saying, “I guess after this song was written, that distributor must have realized ‘Sirf poetry hi nahin likhta. Yeh baaki kuch bhi likhta hai’!”

Also Read: EXCLUSIVE: Boney Kapoor says Mr India 2 is at pre-mature level: “I was approached by a foreign studio…”