Amitabh Bhattacharya - Far from filmi

Nahi, nahi mujhe koi nahi poochta,” says lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya, sitting in his sister’s humble apartment in Andheri. “I go for audio launches and no one recognises me. I go to the Filmfare awards with my friends Swanand Kirkire and Amit Trivedi, people stop them on the red carpet for pictures and autographs and no one stops me,” he says giggling.

Doesn’t that bother him? Sometimes, not always, he says. The Filmfare incident made him feel left out, he admits. “Koi toh rok lo, koi toh photo kheench lo,” he says with a poker face, mischief in his voice.

A Lucknow boy at heart
The filmypana, a word Bhattacharya has borrowed from Bollywood, hasn’t diluted his personality yet. He still can’t smile at the camera without being awkward and his responses don’t seem rehearsed. There's still a small town fanboy in him who gets tongue tied when he meets industry veterans. They’re all within reach now — at award ceremonies and private functions — but he doesn’t know what to say. “I have been introduced to Javed sahab (Akhtar), lekin main unse kya baat karun.” “Gulzar Sahab has always intrigued me, kaise soch te honge, kaise rehte honge. I’ve seen him at award functions but I could never muster the courage to walk up to him,” he says.

Ask him about a music director he dreams of working with and he responds almost before the question is over. “AR Rahman, I’ve looked up to him, working with him has been a dream,” he says.

So is he working with Rahman? “Yes, I am,” he says with boyish enthusiasm in his voice. “The first time I met him with the director of the film, he was having dinner and he asked us to join him. He picked up a bowl of bhindi to serve us and asked if I am vegetarian or non-vegetarian. In my anxiety and excitement, I said 'both'. I felt so stupid after that, what must he be thinking?” he says.

A classic struggle
Like most Bollywood strugglers, Bhattacharya’s career graph was relatively flat for a few years. But starting 2006, his fortunes changed as his career path took a sharp upward curve.

He first arrived in Mumbai in 1999 because he wanted to sing. In the 14 years since, he's done it all — singing in a chorus with 30 other strugglers for Rs500 a day, singing dummy recordings for small-time musicians and doing odd jobs for new small music directors. Today, he's the 'go to' lyricist for some of the biggest production houses in the industry.

Reluctant lyricist
He started getting some singing work through networking with newer, less established composers like Pritam. "He (Pritam) didn't have work for me then but he let me assist him in a few projects,” reminisces Bhattacharya.

In those days, music directors would hold live performances while pitching their music to producers. “There would be a dholi, a guitarist and I started going as a singer. But only a tune wouldn’t work at these sittings, there had be lyrics, even if they were dummy and were re-written by the big guys later. So I started writing basic lyrics, the typical aap se mulakaat hogayi, pehli mulakaat mein barsaat hogayi type stuff,” he says.

People recognised he was particularly good at lyrics and about two years later, he got his first offer as a lyricist. OM: The fusion band, of which Amit Trivedi (music director of Udaan, Dev D, Lootera) was part of, approached him to write lyrics. What's more, he would be paid for it. Bhattacharya agreed but he wrote under a pen name Indraneel because he still had his heart set on being a singer.

“I didn’t want to be known as someone who writes and sings too. Back then, there was a filmypana and insecurity in the industry — aap gaane gaate hain, toh bas gaana hi gaayiye. Aap lyrics bhi kyun likhte hain, aap compose bhi kyun karte hain,” he says.

“Someone told me that if I wrote, so-and-so lyricist would make sure I don’t get work. I was apprehensive.”

Game changer
By then, Trivedi had realised Bhattacharya’s potential as a lyricist and approached him to write lyrics for the film Aamir, that Trivedi was pitching for. Bhattacharya agreed to write the scratch lyrics and suggested to Trivedi that he get a big writer on board once he bagged the project. Trivedi agreed but as luck would have it, the UTV spot boys team (producers of Aamir) insisted on retaining Bhattacharya's lyrics. Bhattacharya wanted to use a pen name again, but the producers insisted that he used his real name. “So I said I’ll use only my first name. I thought I could evade people if required,” he snickers.

And then came along Anurag Kashyap’s Emotional Atyachaar, a career defining moment for both Bhattacharya and Trivedi.

A transformation
By 2011, Bhattacharya had reconciled to the fact that he would be known for his smartly-worded lyrics. By then he had also received a National Award for his work in Onir’s I AM. Everyone at home was surprised but happy.

But weren’t there questions from Lucknow, a city known for its tehzeeb and lihaaz, on lyrics in songs he's written like Pyaar ki pungi baaja ke and Dreamum Wakepum? “Sometimes parents of friends and other elders cross question me on the type of songs I write, but the younger crowd likes my work,” he says.
He tries to maintain a balance. He follows a character dheela hai with a song like Azadiyaan from Udaan.

But how does a quiet, reclusive boy from a small town end up writing Chikni Chameli and Abhi Mujh Mein Kahin for the same film (Agneepath) What goes on in his head when he spends days alone in his Malad apartment reading scripts (which he insists upon so that he can understand the dialect of his characters)?
The world around me is boring, he says. “All the fun is in my head.”

While writing for movies like Lootera, he keeps in mind the seriousness of the film or the character. But, if he is writing a Badtameez Dil, he sticks to the brief and knows that he needs to pen down diluted Bambaiyya Hindi. He enjoys doing both. “When I wrote the line Sabun ki shakal mein, beta tu toh nikla keval jhaag (the song DK Bose in Delhi Belly), I was alone at home and I started laughing out loud.”

That’s his formula, he says. Traditionalists call it sacreligious, but it clearly works.