MUMBAI: Manoj Muntashir of ‘Teri Galliyan’ fame, one of Bollywood’s most talented lyricists, recently worked on a rendition of Coldplay’s ‘Paradise’, for EMI Records India’s first single, which also happens to be Anmoll Mallik’s debut single – ‘Lamhein’.
The project was offered to him by music composer Anu Malik – Anmoll Mallik’s father. He called Muntashir to his studio sometime in January this year and told him about EMI Records India’s plan of recreating the British band’s famous track. Muntashir took up the task, however, reveals that the biggest challenge for him was writing Hindi lyrics for English notation.
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“We all met at Anuji’s studio where Anmoll sang the English version of the song for me a few times. This is when Anuji came up with the word ‘Lamhein’. He also added that it is a nice word but it has been done to death. While we were still having this conversation, I thought of the line ‘reza reza bikhra tera chehra teri aankhein’. I immediately asked Anmoll if the line appealed to her, as she is really young and it did. An hour later, we had managed to crack the lyrics. After that what Anmol and Anuji did to the song is history,” said Muntashir.
While most would have found the task of writing lyrics for Coldplay’s recreation challenging, it came naturally to Muntashir. “Anything that comes naturally becomes easy because as a writer I have believed in effortless work. One must get the inspiration right and everything else falls into place. So, I did not really work hard on ‘Lamhein’. I believe that the words in this song descended from heaven and that is why, it has some heavenly qualities,” the lyricist stated.
Furthermore, the writer gave away his secrets of deriving the right inspiration. He said everything from beauty, thoughts, books, and legendry writers works inspires him. This is probably the inspirational writing that has bagged him projects in the past, and is what is bringing him more offers in the present.
Muntashir’s upcoming work includes a Sonu Nigam single with T-Series titled ‘Chup Gai Shaamein’ which is due for release sometime this month. Apart from that he has a few film projects as well, including Neeraj Pandey’s ‘M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story’, Milan Luthria’s ‘Baadshaho’, Prakash Jha’s ‘Jai Gaangajal’ and A.R.Murugadoss’s ‘Akira’.
