On the 20th anniversary of the timeless romance Veer Zaara, iconic music composer Madan Mohan’s son Sanjeev Kohli reveals how the legendary soundtrack of the film was created and how Veer Zaara is also a realisation of a son’s quest to honour his father’s legacy.

Sanjeev says, “Veer-Zaara for me was the realisation of a dream that I could never believe would ever come true. It was a realisation of a son’s dream for his father’s musical legacy. When my father, the late composer Madan Mohan, passed away in 1975, he was only 51 years old. A lot of music still to be created, a lot of tunes yet to be shared with the world, a lot yet to be achieved! He was widely acknowledged as a great composer but big banners, films with big stars and popular awards always eluded him, and in fact this hurt him deeply.” He adds, “In 2003, one day Yashji told me that after 6 years he had decided to direct another film, but a film that needed old world music that was away from the western influences that had crept into the scene today - music based on ethnic sounds, music that had a strong melody line with acoustic instruments - music like that of the 60s and 70s - music like that of Heer Ranjha and Laila Majnu.”

Sanjeev further says, “Yashji further added that he had sittings with various composers of today, but was missing that old melodic charm, as each of them had synthesised their tunes to a large extent to suit the changing tastes of today's young listeners, who were now in the throes of a full-blown western culture influence - night clubs, grooves, and remixes. He was in a dilemma.” Sanjeev adds, “Instinctively, I blurted out that I had some old world melodies on tape, now not heard for 28 years. He seemed excited at the idea and very surprised that I had never mentioned this before. His son, Aditya Chopra was scripting the new film. Adi was a man of today and needed commercially acceptable songs.”

Yash Chopra asked Sanjeev Kohli to dive into finding his father’s long lost tunes. Sanjeev says, “I was told to go and hear as many of the tapes I could, and to play some selected tunes to them. I spent almost a month going back at first to the 2-3 cassettes I originally had (thank God they were undamaged!) and in that itself I loved 3-4 songs that I knew would work even today. When Yashji and Adi heard them, they reacted very positively, but they still wanted to hear them on dummy tracks with 2-3 musicians, as they were very old recordings with feeble sound, often almost inaudible.”

He adds, “I got together a team of 3 musicians and we recorded 30 dummies - largely from the 3 cassettes and a few from the spools (it would take me months to hear all the spools, and I still had my responsibilities as CEO - so there was no time for all this except late nights and Sundays!). I personally wrote dummy lyrics to the tracks and got 3 young singers to sing them. I remember the day Yashji and Adi heard the 30 dummy tracks. I was extremely nervous - not for myself, but for the fear of rejection of my father. Did I need to bring him to this possibility, and belittle him, now, 28 years after he was an acknowledged legend?” Sanjeev further says, “I guess they liked what they heard - and told me they had found what they were looking for. In a few days, they had selected 10 out of the 30 songs and assigned them to situations they had in their screenplay! I was extremely overwhelmed.”

Sanjeev says that the songs took a year to record and opens up about how Yash Chopra was keen to have Lata Mangeshkar sing in the album! He says, “Yashji was clear that only Lata Mangeshkar sings in the album! He says, “Yashji was clear that only Lataji would sing the female songs and that thrilled me because all Madanji tunes were made only for Lataji and it would have been incomplete if she did not sing them. But at the same time it concerned me. It would be so challenging for her to sing for Madanji again after 30 years! She was keeping indifferent health and people could be unfair in passing judgement on her. But she found an inner strength to sing as only she can.”

Sanjeev was thrilled when his father’s compositions received such overwhelming love. He says, “With Veer Zaara, every fantasy of mine came true in one stroke. Madanji’s tunes formed the soundtrack of one of India’s biggest and most successful films, created by India’s most successful producer and director, Yash Chopra. The top stars of today, Shahrukh Khan, Preity Zinta, and Rani Mukherji, formed the cast of this film. And what a coincidence that Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini danced to his tunes again and once again his songs were on the top of the charts for almost an entire year, and he finally won many popular awards.”