‘Dabangg’: ‘Munni Badnaam Hui’… But How?

Lalit Pandit  (of Jatin-Lalit duo), the music director who has composed only this number in the ‘Dabangg’ album (the music for all the other songs is scored by Sajid-Wajid), had been after producer Arbaaz Khan and writer-director Abhinav Kashyap to give him an opportunity to present tunes for songs for their first film. Recalls Abhinav, “Although we had signed Sajid-Wajid and had also finalised the tunes for four songs, we, nevertheless, went to Lalit to hear him out.” Butts in Lalit, “Basically, they had come to me to do some time-pass.”

“Not exactly time pass,” counters Abhinav, adding, “We still needed an item song for the film and were on the hunt for an exciting tune. So, we thought, if Lalit has something nice to offer, we could ask him to compose that song.”

Anyway, after Lalit presented them a number of tunes, the two weren’t quite satisfied. It was then that Lalit told them, he had some scratch tunes recorded. “The first song we heard from those banked tunes was the Munni song,” says an excited Abhinav. “The moment we heard the line Main Zandu balm huyi in the song, both, Arbaaz and I, knew we had got what we wanted. Right there, we shook hands and told Lalit, this would be our item song. Lalit offered to take established voices for the song, but we asked him who had sung the scratch. He told us, they were Mamta Shankar and Aishwarya. And we insisted that it had to be them and only them who would record the number. I liked the Suraiya-style nasal accent of Mamta,” ends Abhinav. And so does the world today!

– By Komal Nahta