As a creative artiste, does it make a difference writing for three subjects spanning 500 years in time?
Frankly, it does not. Whenever I listen to a script, I try and understand its wave-length. Every decent film has a specific texture and sur. I gauge the intellectual level and sensibility of the characters. This is done at a conscious level in part, like I know that the words I used in Jodhaa Akbar like ranj, fiza and chilman cannot be used in Rock On!! but there is a level of thought that is not very conscious too.
Words, like people, are known by the company they keep. The dictionary meanings of words are not enough, because what they evoke is also because of their associations over many years in the subconscious minds of listeners.

So how much is creative art and what is the proportion of calculated craft?
Well, like I said, it's a creative exercise to get into the sur of a film in an involved, emotional, passionate yet innocent manner, but simultaneously, the whole process of cleverly and creatively editing what I am writing is going on. It’s a paradox, but surprisingly that’s how it functions. And as you keep working you internalise the process, which goes so deep that it becomes a reflex akin to, if I can give a crude comparison, shifting your foot from accelerator to brake while driving.

And yet, all the three films you did recently are unfamiliar terrain for you. You are not into the rock scene, we have yet to reach near 2050 and we do not have first-hand knowledge of Akbar’s time. So did you research in any way for these films?
To an extent, I did. We all know that there was no Urdu in Emperor Akbar’s time. So we have to take some artistic liberty and used that flavour of Urdu and Hindi that will create an ethos of the phase and represent the era. A corresponding situation would be the kind of English used in Ben-Hur when Hebrew, not English, was the real language then.
In Love Story 2050, I kept the lyrics simple keeping in mind what might be the scenario 42 years later.

And what about Rock On!!? You are not exactly a part of the rock music scene yourself.
I must tell you one thing about Indian rock musicians. I find that their outfits and accessories are modern or hip but the content of their songs is very traditional. You get to hear the same purani thinking and nothing new and that has always disturbed me! So the first aspect I decided was that the songs of Rock On!! would be different. The concerns, content and language, I decided, would not be that of typical Indian songs. Most Hindi film songs, if you study them, are sourced either from ghazal or folk and that’s not what I have done. But I decided to have modern content as well.
In the song Socha hai, for example, the character asks strange questions. In Pichhle saat dinon mein he lists things that he has lost in the last seven days, like an important piece of paper, and so on.

An important part of film lyrics over the decades has been philosophy.
True, and I have put in some sudden thought-provoking question. Amidst the absurd questions I mentioned (like why there are not two moons) some lines like Ped hain kam kyoon? or Duniya mein hain jung kyoon?

How do you interpret Rock Music as a genre?
To me, Rock is about breaking conventional norms and being rebellious. It is about expressing thoughts on modern life anf realities in a contemporary way that is not back-lit but is irreverent and sometimes shocking. It is also about energy.

There has been so much of rock of late in Hindi films.
Yes, but like I said, it’s been more about the beats than the lyrical content or even the musical structure and orchestration. This is where Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have scored above what we hear in other films. For one, the orchestration is in sync with the way we see the band performing on screen - there is neither any instrument missing nor any additional one playing. It’s not about a rock-based beat and a typical film song orchestra. For the first time, perhaps, we see a composing entity honest and loyal to this genre and its structure and sound.

Farhan, your son, has sung on five songs. Since he is from today’s generation, did you have to overview or maybe advice him on his diction?
No, I don’t think that he needs it. Like I said earlier, the words used were also simple and modern and Farhan is not someone who can only write but not speak Hindustani. If he was hesitant about anything, it was about being able to sing well, but Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy were very confident about that aspect.

But you do prefer to be present at recordings for this reason, right?
I do. That’s because most singers today have not had Hindi as their first language. Such people tend to give wrong stress on certain words and stretch the wrong vowels.

Today, unlike those from yesteryears, lyricists like Gulzarsaab, Prasoon Joshi and you are as fluent in English as in Hindi. Apart from English lines being trendy today, is there any other advantage to this?
Let me tell you that the biggest actors, writers and filmmakers in India have always been bilingual - whether it is Raj Kapoor, B.R.Chopra, Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan or even poets like Faiz. The tragedy of our country’s education system, for which we are paying a price and will continue to do so unless things change, is that our children are either educated in the vernacular or in English. The former group is rooted to our culture but tends to be parochial and narrow as it lacks a world-view, whereas those who learn in the English medium are exposed to the world and branch out but end up rootless!
Culture always travels through languages. We are providing our children either roots or branches but not the complete tree! Roots signify tradition and branches denote revolt because of exposure to other cultures. It is the bilingual people in-between who have the advantage and can travel between the past and the future. Let me give you another crude example. Children often play with a small stone tied to a string. To me the stone represents the rebel that cannot remain flying in the air if the string goes. And the string is the foundation that will become flaccid if the stone is removed!

What is the broader social solution to this?
The educational system needs to be given a rethink. And back home, parents need to be vigilant. Speaking in one’s mother-tongue should be imperative. What the parents possess by way of a basic identity and knowledge of their ethos, religion, history, mythology, folklore, culture and language must be given to the children, and after that, they must also be allowed to go beyond. But nothing can be thrust on the children, there should only be exposure that can lead to imbibing of the right things. I can bet my last penny that today any upper middle-class Maharashtrian couple in a city will not have children who know half as much about their culture as the father and mother do! But if, for example, if they have been listening to Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s Abhangvani in the household and the children at that point have not appreciated it, 20 years down the line, such kids will go back to it.

And yet languages - even English - are getting corrupted.
I have given a lot of thought to this and I find all this extremely disturbing. Our vernacular languages are surviving only in the poorest of the poor and such people are uneducated. If language shrinks, culture, which needs it as a vehicle, will shrink too. The aesthetics of any language are decided by the educated middle-class. It is they who are losing touch with languages and that’s truly alarming.

How much does it affect you as a lyricist?
Personally, I do not think that I have any right to complain! The filmmakers I work with always give me a great balance wherein I get at least two or three situations where I can say something of substance, like Karan Johar who may have three club numbers but also ensures that the other songs have depth. A lyricist for a film like Om Shanti Om cannot write what Sahir did in a subject like Pyaasa, but that film did have Sar jo tera chakraaye and OSO had scope for poetry in Main agar kahoon.
Filmmakers like Ashutosh Gowariker, J.P.Dutta and my children Farhan and Zoya are also very particular about quality. Zoya’s Luck By Chance, for example, is an amazing script that is a funny, incisive yet tremendously emotional insight into the film industry. Today’s filmmmakers and writers have brought in a huge change - you can learn so much from them and you have to de-learn a lot of things too!
Let me just say that I have not really written against my conscience yet! Yes, there are times when the tune and the situation do not allow depth, but I am not a puritan and I do not think that it is wrong to write light-hearted songs as long as the aesthetics and the finesse of language are not defiled. In fact, the primary quality needed - and which is so much in short supply today - is versatility.

Why are words and melody getting short shrift today?
That is something that will happen to any art form when power and control pass from creative minds to power-centres of marketing! It is these power-centres that forever thrive on their own delusory myths about what people like. In India, market-surveys as a concept are not developed well and none of these people understand the angry sense of loss that music lovers feel, for their constant refrains fall on deaf ears. If on the one hand, these forces are complaining that music is not the same, they are also unwilling to change music for the better!
On the other hand, whenever I am judge on a show or even watching reality shows, attending college functions or travelling, I find it very gratifying to realise that good songs, even if not forcibly promoted on television, still have a direct connect with the people, who hear them, sing them and discuss them. For example, my song Main jahaan rahoon from Namastey London, which was not promoted at all. And do you know what a rage most of Kailash Kher’s songs are with the youngsters?

So where are things going wrong?
Apart from language, there is this desperate one-upmanship to beat each other at tempo and energy, two qualities that the youth like in their songs. And this leads to tempo turning into frenzy at the cost of melody, lyrics and depth! The real song is that jo dil mein utar jaata hai and is cherished 1,5 or more years later. The earlier we understand this truth as the cause of the diminishing returns, the better it will be! Beats, after all, provide a transient high. In all that frenzy there should be space and situation for poetry with the right words, for 99 per cent of songs that endure do so because of words and a great composition.