Composing The 'DDLJ' Soundtrack: Lalit Pandit of Jatin-Lalit On How He Knew Shah Rukh Khan Was Going To Become a Legend

Lalit Pandit finds it a tad objectionable when I try to take him back 30 years to the days of DDLJ. When I ask if he remembers the recordings and the days leading up to its release, he says, “Of course I remember every single day... very clearly."

Until DDLJ, Jatin-Lalit had composed several hit songs and albums, but Lalit remembers feeling like they were always short of being considered by the absolute best of filmmakers. They had already worked with Shah Rukh Khan by then, but Yash Chopra was still an eon away from the duo who had begun their career five years prior. This was when legendary singer Asha Bhonsle made a phone call to Yashji and asked him to meet the two boys, who were brimming with talent. 

“It must have been in late '94, if I remember correctly,” Lalit begins. “Back then, we had already worked with Bakshi saab (Anand Bakshi), but working with Yashji and Lataji was still a huge milestone. But when Ashaji helped get us this meeting, we knew we had to go all out.” 

Yash Chopra, by this point, was already known for the way he hosted musical sessions at his studio. Apart from key cast and crew members, these sessions would also have in attendance his wife Pamela and sons Uday and Aditya. The time given to Jatin-Lalit to present their tunes before the Chopras was around one hour, and the composers had arrived, armed with some of their best tunes. They played all of them, some with dummy lyrics, just to give their listeners a better idea of the songs' mood.

One of these songs went, Lalit sings, “Mehndi laga ke chalna, payal baja ke chalna, par aashiqon se apna daman bacha ke chalna…”. The Chopras had liked most of their tunes and a couple of smaller musical ideas. But it took a few more months for them to get a callback. “We were working on Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa when Adi called up one day. He introduced himself again and said he was working on a film he wanted to shoot soon. After he gave us a short idea, we spoke about music and before hanging up, he had one question, 'Woh mehndi wala tune kisi ko diya nahi na?' (You did not give away that tune about mehndi to anyone, did you)?

He recalls Aditya Chopra’s story narration to be the best he’s heard till date. He would narrate with expressions, exact dialogues and how he’d want to treat them. In specific instances, even details like edits were worked out in his head, as though he had already seen the movie play a hundred times. Lalit explains this by repeating a line from Ho Gaya Hai Tujhko.. He says, “Adi said, for the lines, ‘Hua kya na jaane…. yeh dil kyun diwaane’ he would first have Shah Rukh on screen and then when he turned around, there would only be Kajol. Between these two shots, he said he would use just fade-in, fade-out.” He recalls feeling impressed by these specific instructions, still months away from the shoot. But once they returned from shooting in Europe and with the rough edits done, Lalit couldn’t believe how perfectly Adi had executed his idea.

The madness of his perfection wasn’t limited to this song alone. Lalit also remembers visiting the sets of all the songs that were shot in Mumbai’s Mehboob Studios. This includes Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna, but just as interesting was the shoot of Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye. The shoot of the latter was especially fascinating to witness because it was a set that was meant to look like a house in London.

“It was 1995 and even McDonald's hadn’t yet opened in India. So, Adi made sure fresh burgers from a McDonald's in London got sent to India, overnight, to add to the authenticity.” 

Besides working with a legendary banner, it was the singer of these two songs that changed everything for Lalit and Jatin. “Lataji was inaccessible to us. She, too, had cut down her singing by quite a bit by then..."

On one of these days after they’d been signed on to work on DDLJ, when they were presenting their arrangement plans for the songs at the studio, that moment finally happened. “After we finished discussing, Yashji picked up the phone and called Lataji. He told her that his son Adi was going to make his first film and that Jatin-Lalit was going to compose music for it.”

Lalit talks about how quickly this happened and how his heart had started to beat fast. From the other side, he could hear Lata Mangeshkar tell Yash Chopra that she knew their work and that she had loved their song ‘Pehla Nasha’ from Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar. “Then in the next second, Yashji gave the phone to me and asked me to sing the tune of Mere Khwabon Mein... to her.” 

He sang the complete tune, and Mangeshkar asked him to return the phone to Yash Chopra. “She had loved it.” But composing their first song with her would still take a while more. He speaks of how she would often feel unwell and that she would have to cancel recording sessions due to this. “There was a one in 10 chance that it would actually work out,” he says. “But one day, when we were at our studio, her niece called us and said that she would reach the recording theatre in half an hour.”

This sent the duo into panic. Their studio was in Juhu and they were expected to travel all the way to the Western Outdoor studio in Fort, in half an hour. Mangeshkar's house was just 10 minutes away, but for Jatin and Lalit, this was a two-hour drive in Mumbai’s traffic. “We both got into our Fiat and started on that drive. By the time we reached Bandra station, we knew we were not going to make it. So, I got down, took the next train and rushed to Western Outdoor. I ran up the stairs and just when I reached, I saw Lataji get out of the lift. In my innocence, I tried to act cool, like I was Shammi Kapoor, as though I had been there for hours. She looked at me right into my eyes and said, 'Bhaag ke aaye ho kya?' pointing to beads of sweat on my forehead."

Characteristically, she took her time to make him comfortable before they composed their song. As Lalit points out, it took Jatin one more hour to get there. “But when she started singing, we knew that was going to be much bigger than us…” 

Upon release, the songs would become one of the highest-selling cassettes of all time. “A few weeks after release, Jatin, Adi and I went on a drive to Rhythm House. As we reached, we struggled for a bit to find a spot to park our car, partly due to a long queue of people that formed in that area. During this ordeal, Adi just pointed at the lines and asked, 'You know that they are all waiting to buy our cassette, right?' The feeling of seeing that queue outside Rhythm House that day was a phenomenon that Lalit says he hasn’t yet seen after DDLJ. “Not before it and not after.” And in 2010, the same album was voted by the BBC as the top 40 Indian musicals of all time. “It’s a list that includes films like Guide and Teesri Manzil. And to have our album win it…” 

It was around this time, during an interview, that Lalit was asked if Shah Rukh Khan or Salman Khan would end up becoming a legend in the future. “It was obvious to us that Shah Rukh would turn out to be one. He was always blessed with the best songs. In that interview, we added that even if those films do not get remembered, Shah Rukh would be, because of the songs in them. That’s what made Rajesh Khanna a superstar, too.” 

And when it came to personal branding, it also placed them right on top with the best of the country. They would also go on to become SRK’s most prolific collaborator having worked with him in other films like Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, K3G, Chalte Chalte, Mohabbattein, Yes Boss and Kuch Kuch Hota Hain too.

As Lalit speaks about pure numbers and the madness of that album, he also recalls a conversation between them and the great Gulshan Kumar of T-Series. “Gulshanji ran into us around that time and asked us when we would be giving him an album like DDLJ. In response, we said, 'If we get a chance to work with you, we will also give you a DDLJ.' Hearing this, Gulshanji asked us, 'How many cassettes do you think you’ve sold of DDLJ compared to what I’ve sold?'

The cassette king was able to see the same thing Adi was able to see in that duo when they met for the first time, when they sang,'Mehndi laga ke chalna, payal baja ke chalna…'