Stalwarts and an anthem

Hyderabad: There was Urdu ki khushboo in the air within the four walls of the auditorium at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University. The reasons were the three stalwarts of the Indian film industry, Gulzar, Vishal Bhardwaj and Sukhwinder Singh who were there for the launch of the university tarana (anthem), which was composed by them.

Students went wild when Chaiyyan Chaiyyan, penned by Gulzar and sung by Sukhwinder Singh and Bismil from Haider, that brought all three of them together, were played. But it wasn’t just them, Gulzar, Vishal and Sukhwinder seemed to be having a great time as well.

Talking about the anthem, Sukhwinder said, “I sang this song six months ago, the day Gulzar saab, Vishal and I were recording the Bismil song from Haider. These two songs are very different. So I took a break of one and a half hours to change my mood before recording it. And Gulzar saab has described the value and virtues of the Urdu language in an artistic way. He paints the song, like a painter. When I was told about the subject of the song, I was expecting it to be a trance-like number. But when I heard it for the first time, it felt like a dance number.”

Vishal, meanwhile, shares another story about the anthem. “I had composed a completely different track for the song but I remembered something Gulzar saab had taught me, ‘Never to accept mediocrity for myself’. So within that short time before Sukhwinder came back, the current track was composed,” he says.

While Vishal and Sukhwinder had all the attention from the crowd, it was when Gulzar walked up to talk, that the entire audience stood up. “Every time I come back here, I feel I have come home and just don’t like to go back. This anthem is as special to me as the university is and the aim is that even when you go to different cities, when this song is played, you can immediately know that it’s from Hyderabad,” he says.