The makers of the upcoming Hindi film Fanney Khan have released a new version of the song Achche Din, which trades the sombre notes of the original for upbeat lyrics. The decision was reportedly taken because the song was being used on social media to target the Narendra Modi government over its 2014 poll promise of bringing “acche din” to India.
Fanney Khan, an official remake of Dominique Deruddere’s Belgian comedy Everybody’s Famous! (2000), stars Anil Kapoor as a failed singer-turned-taxi driver in Mumbai who kidnaps pop sensation Baby Singh (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) to fund the singing career of his daughter Lata (Pihu Sand). Also starring Rajkummar Rao, the film will be released on August 3.
The original Achche Din, sung and composed by Amit Trivedi with lyrics by Irshad Kamil, depicted Fanney Khan asking god when his good times would come. The lyrics were, “Mere acche din gab aayenge?”. The video was released on July 19 and has notched up more than 2.5 million views so far.
In the new version released on Sunday, the lyrics announce: “Achche din hain aaye re” (The good days have come). The one-minute song uses some of the cheerful visuals from the original video.
According to a Mid-Day report, the makers had to come up with the new version because social media users were using the track to criticise the Modi government.
Director Atul Manjrekar told the tabloid that he did not anticipate that the song would be politicised. “We cut a new video and released it now because our song was unnecessarily taking a political colour,” Manjrekar said. “It didn’t strike us that this is also the slogan of the government.”
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