30 Years Of Tezaab & Ek Do Teen: Trivia You Don’t Know… Yet!

On its 30th anniversary let us go on a journey of nostalgia about this movie, which was marketed as a “violent love story”.

Tezaab starred Anil Kapoor who after Mr. India was a huge star. Opposite him was Madhuri, for whom this was the 1st big hit and she went on to give one block-buster hit after another. Anil Kapoor won the best actor award and Madhuri won a nomination as well. This was the 3rd consecutive hit in a row for Director N Chandra after Ankush and Pratighaat. Other nominations included best film, best director, best supporting actor for Chunky Pandey and best music director for Laxmikant Pyarelal. Most of the awards however went to Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak.

The song Ek Do Teen established Madhuri as a dancing sensation. When Tezaab released, Madhuri had gone for a family vacation to USA. When she returned she was greeted at the airport by thousands of fans who kept on screaming “Mohini, Mohini”. Madhuri herself says the song will always be a favorite as it gave her an identity. In an interview to Simi Grewal she said that after she returned from USA to greets of Mohini Mohini and she was travelling in her car street urchins shouted “that’s the Ek Do Teen girl” and she gave her 1st autograph. Madhuri had earlier worked with choreographer Saroj Khan but for classical dances and this was the first time they did a commercial Bollywood dance and Madhuri carried it off perfectly. This gave Saroj ji her 1st Filmfare award.

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The same song had a male version as well. While Alka Yagnik won the best singer female award, for the male version, Amit Kumar won a nomination and lost out to Udit Narayan for Papa Kehtey Hain. Javed Akhtar too was nominated for best lyrics for Ek do teen as well. For the legend it was not too difficult and it reportedly took him just an hour to write the lyrics which idea he got from the music directors habit of saying “Ek do teen”

Tezaab had another lovely song “Keh do ke tum” , one of the best songs of Amit Kumar’s career and which won a nomination for his co-singer Anuradha Poudwal, which lost out of course to “Ek do teen”.

The popularity of “Ek do Teen” can be gauged from the fact that it had a remix version, sung by Shreya Ghoshal in Baaghi 2 and picturised on Jacqeline Fernandez. Unfortunately it was not too well received due to comparisons with the original dance by Madhuri.

One of the huge hit songs of the movie was “So gaya ye jahaan” and interestingly it was shot in 3 cities over a period of 17 nights. Chunky Panday is brilliant in the song. Tezaab had become a 5 hour film and after editing it was brought down to 3 hours. The Producer wanted to shorten it even further by cutting out “So gaya ye jahaan” but luckily director N Chandra refused as he considered it integral part of the movie. Once during the shooting of the song, late at night the actors were hungry and went to a hotel to eat. They had forgotten they were in make up, with blood etc. The hotel staff got scared, and then the situation had to be retrieved.

Thanks N Chandra, Anil Kapoor and Madhuri for this classic.