Trivia Tunes: When a song meant for Ajay Devgn’s Zakhm was used for John Abraham’s Saaya

By Rajiv Vijayakar -

January 10, 2024 - 11:00 AM IST

From children’s poem to adult fare!

Trivia Tunes: When a song meant for Ajay Devgn’s Zakhm was used for John Abraham’s Saaya

In films, anything can happen. Just as we find versions of old Hindi songs in Greece since the 1960s, and both Usha Khanna and A.R. Rahman found inspiration from the same Middle Eastern song to create, respectively, ‘Har nazar ke sau afsane’ (Shabnam) and ‘Latka’ (Hindustani), a children’s choir song can become a key song in a very adult film like Animal! The song, ‘Jamal kudu’, was penned by Iranian poet Bijan Smandar as a poem, but sung, possibly with modifications, in a girls’ high school there as composed by the Khatereh Group. The first line addresses the beloved and declares love for her. It is filmed during Bobby Deol’s entry as sung by young girls and women, when he is sashaying in front of pretty women balancing a glass of alcohol on his head!

The travelling melodies

Anu Malik’s excellent soundtrack in Mukesh Bhatt’s Saaya was further enriched by a single M.M. Kreem composition, ‘O saathiya’ sung by Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik. Before we jump to conclusions that either Anu stepped into Kreem territory after one recorded song or that Kreem came in because of Anu’s date hassles or inabilities to deliver (!) one final track, here’s the truth: the song was recorded for Zakhm (1998) but not used. The executive producer was Mukesh again and when the song fitted a situation in the new film, it was transported!

Made for a film, used in another with same lead characters!

Anwar and Lata Mangeshkar recorded the first song for Heer Ranjha, which was to be directed by Ram Maheshwari (Neel Kamal, Kaajal) with Sunny Deol and Poonam Dhillon in the 1980s. The song, ‘Rab ne banaya mujhe tere liye’ was written by Anand Bakshi and composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal. But the film was soon shelved, possibly because Sunny and Poonam also featured in Sohni Mahiwal then. Harmesh Malhotra (of Nagina fame) then launched a film on the fabled lovebirds of Punjab in the 1990s and signed Anil Kapoor and Sridevi, and L-P and Bakshi remembered this song and used it in the new film in three parts!

The ‘tune-y’ coincidence

In a single year, 2003, Nadeem-Shravan-Sameer Anjaan gave us the same song in two different films, the flop Footpath (a dark saga) and the comic hit, Hungama. The two songs, both with the same tune and common mukhda, ‘Chain aapko mila’ were rendered respectively by S.P. Balasubramaniam and Asha Bhosle in the former and Shaan and Sadhana Sargam in the latter, on whom, in a party sequence, the song was also partly filmed!

Of course, the former song had a slower beat and was filmed in a more poignant situation with different antaras! Oddly enough, both films featured Aftab Shivdasani in the cast. As Sameer Anjaan tells me, “Such things happened fairly frequently in those days! There was another case where I thought a film was stuck for good and gave the song to someone else, and then that movie too was completed!”

Unique debut

The late Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, composer Madan Mohan’s favourite lyricist, made his film debut as an actor and not as the phenomenal, if choosy, songwriter he became. The famous Sadat Hasan Manto was his bosom friend from Delhi and when he was assigned the script of Eight Days (Aath Din) and an acting role by producer-friends Ashok Kumar and S. Mukerji of Filmistan, Manto had summoned Khan to Mumbai as he missed him and got him a small role in the same film. It was a year later that the same banner got Khan to pen lyrics for Do Bhai, which proved to be a breakthrough film also for composer S.D. Burman and singer Geeta Dutt, then unmarried and named Geeta Roy.

A singular friendship

Talking of lyricists acting before the camera, Anand Bakshi did a small role in a film called Picnic (which had Majrooh Sultanpuri’s lyrics) with Manoj Kumar as the hero. A friendship developed between the two that never, however, translated into a prolific professional relationship. When Manoj became a big name, the only film in which Anand Bakshi wrote all songs was Sajan in 1969! Yes, he did write four songs in Manoj’s breakthrough movie, Himalay Ki God Mein, including the hit ‘Chand si mehbooba ho meri’. But though Manoj did four of his own productions with Laxmikant-Pyarelal, their favourite lyricist of over 300 films was never with them in those movies! Later, Anand Bakshi wrote songs in Manoj’s presentation, Deshwasi, which was made by Manoj’s brother, Rajeev Goswami and released in 1991.

The strangest coincidence!

What is there in the film title, Masoom, which means “innocent”? We do not know, but this title has been used in films made in 1960, 1983 and 1996 (apart from in 1941, whose musical record details are unavailable), and each has an iconic children’s song in it, while the film titles too represent children in each. The 1960 Masoom saw the enduring ‘Naani teri morni ko mor le gaye’ sung by Ranu Mukerji, a child then, and composed by her father, Hemant Kumar. In 1983, Gurpreet Kaur (who grew up to be Preeti Uttam), Vanita Mishra and Gauri Bapat, all kids, sang the iconic ‘Lakde ki kaathi’, and in 1996, Anand Raaj Anand, debuting as composer-lyricist, got Aditya Narayan, then just over eight years old, to warble the very popular ‘Chhota baccha samajhke’. There are literally no explanations for such coincidences!