‘A Tamilian trapped among three Punjabis’: Subhash Ghai rewinds to the ‘Taal’ soundtrack

To develop the story of Taal, Ghai turned to his old friend, Sachin Bhowmick, and Javed Siddiqui. When the plot was ready, he told A.R. Rahman, ‘I have written a musical film for you.’

Rahman was delighted.

‘My story,’ Ghai went on, ‘is the body of the film, your music will be its soul. The two must grow together.’

Rahman had recorded two songs for Shikhar before the film was shelved. One was ‘Tera nahin jawab o rabba’, and the other ‘Ishq bina kya jeena yaara’. Ghai absolutely loved ‘Ishq bina’. He told Rahman he was going to use it in Taal, but the film would obviously need many more songs. Besides, every note of the background score had to express an emotion.

The progression of the music had to be like that of the story and the heroine Mansi’s character – tranquil to turbulent to explosive. Beginning with the ghatam (clay pitcher), it would move to the dugi, tabla, dholak, drums, octopad, and finally rise to a crescendo and round off with the timpani.

‘Rahman, you are the hero of the film,’ Ghai said. ‘I have cast no one so far.’

The narrative of Taal derives its music from Chamba in Himachal Pradesh. The compositions had to be rooted in the hills of the north. Lyrics were not a problem; for Anand Bakshi, Himachal was like the back of his hand. The task was to blend his lyrics with Rahman’s modern, global sensibilities.

Ghai started sending Rahman cassettes and CDs of North Indian folk music. When the two got together, he would play the same music on one pretext or another. He did not want to offend Rahman by coming on too strongly. But he soon realized that the composer was not a man to be offended in matters of music. He had an open mind and was eager to learn new styles and compositions. An ace musician, sound engineer, recordist, singer, composer and keyboard wiz, he quickly grasped what Taal needed.

Still, he was not cut from the same cloth as Anand Bakshi. The lyricist did not speak much English; he preferred Hindi and Punjabi. Rahman, at that time, knew little Hindi, and of course no Punjabi.

Bakshi, based in Mumbai, did not like to travel and refused to go to Chennai, where Rahman’s studio was located. The two met only once, when Rahman was in Mumbai and Ghai took him to Bakshi’s house.

The meeting lasted an hour, an hour that felt like an age. Neither Bakshi nor Rahman had much to say after the initial pleasantries. They sat in silence, which was broken only when Ghai tried to make conversation. After a while, Bakshi brought out his harmonium and asked Rahman to play some tunes he had made for Taal. Rahman said he hadn’t made any yet. They had some tea and snacks and sat in silence. Ghai felt like he was trying to arrange a match between a Punjabi and a Tamilian.

That silence eventually produced music so lilting it refuses to grow old.

If Ghai was the bridge between Bakshi’s north and Rahman’s south, Sukhwinder Singh would become the pillars that held up that bridge.

Singh had begun his career at the age of eight, singing on the stage in his hometown Amritsar. He later joined Laxmikant-Pyarelal’s team and became a music arranger. In the early 1990s, he found moderate success as a playback singer in Hindi and South Indian films. A sabbatical followed during which he travelled to the US and UK to hone his craft. He came back to a shower of awards for ‘Chhaiyya chhaiyya’, Rahman’s terrific number for Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se (1998).

Singh understood the layered complexity of Rahman’s music as well as the simple metre of Bakshi’s lyrics and helped bring the two together. Ghai used to call on him all the time and Singh always delivered, with improvisations of his own.

‘It was the case of a Tamilian trapped among three Punjabis,’ chuckles Ghai.

The mellifluous music flows seamlessly through the narrative. The film is a story of perceived betrayal in love, and Ghai wanted a song to state that upfront. He explained the situation to Rahman and Bakshi: a folk singer of Chamba and his troupe are singing. The music had to reflect the setting: a sylvan village ensconced by mountains and forests, sounds of earthen pitchers, chants and bells from temples, and a tune from heaven itself.

Rahman composed a melody and played it on his computer for Ghai using dummy words in Tamil. The tune was lovely, but Ghai wondered how Bakshi was going to replace the Tamil words. The legendary lyricist, even after all the years of working together, could however, still surprise Ghai. After spending some time listening to the tune, he wrote: ‘Kariye na kariye na koi vaada kisi se kariye na / Kariye kariye, o kariye kariye to vaada fir todiye na’ (Don’t, don’t make a promise to someone / And if you do, do make sure you don’t break your vow).

The lyrics were perfect and needed no smoothening from Sukhwinder Singh or Ghai.

‘A great song like this is the result of the composer, lyricist, musicians, choreographer, actors and the director coming together harmoniously,’ says Ghai. ‘In the eye of the public, though, the songs belong to the stars.’

Rahman worked nights, from about nine in the evening to seven or eight in the morning. Ghai was used to working days, but he told Singh that they would have to make changes to accommodate Rahman’s genius. He was also careful not to have Taal’s music sound like L -P’s or R.D. Burman’s. Had L–P done ‘Taal se taal mila’, it might have been a dholak-based rhythm. Instead, for the opening strains, Rahman used the sound of droplets of water, followed by Sukhwinder Singh’s ‘Tum tanak tum ta na na’ laced with an alaap in a female chorus and modern percussion, rounded off with the flute.

Ghai had briefly dozed off the night they were composing this part in Rahman’s studio in Chennai. The composer went away to offer his midnight prayers. When he came back and played this strain, Ghai woke up with a start and screamed in jubilation: ‘That’s the one!’

It is such a layered composition that few artists can truly replicate it in stage shows, though there is no dearth of those who try.

Excerpted with permission from Karma’s Child, Subhash Ghai with Suveen Sinha, HarperCollins India.