'Dard-e-Disco is a dumb song'!!

By Subhash K Jha

If you see Dhol and the other all-boys' comedies, you would agree dumbing -down is the order of the (Fri)day.

Nevertheless Javed Akhtar's rhyming scheme in the track Dard-e-disco in Om Shanti Om comes as a bit of a shocker.

The lyric goes, " Dil mein mere hai dard-e-disco…. Phirta hoon main New York, Paris, LA, San Francisco…Dil mein mere hai dard-e-disco…Wohchhod gaya mujhe peechle mahiney ke 26 taarikh ko…Dil Mein mere hai dard-e-disco …

Er…. . It's the time to disco for Javed Saab. After Gulzar's dime-store prattle in Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom it's the the other bard's turn to get verse.

Laughs Javed Saab, "You must understand every song in a film has to go with the given situation and character. The dumbing-down, as you call it, in Dard-e-disco comes from the fact that the guy who sings it, a is a bit of silly goose, not exactly intellectually equipped to sprout poetry.

In the film-within-a-film in Om Shanti Om it's shown that the hero (played by Shah Rukh) insists that an absurd song be composed for him to sing and dance on stage.

While writing lines I had to constantly keep reminding myself that the song wasn't for Shah Rukh but the character that the Star plays in a film within the film. We had to constantly keep checking my poetry to make sure it didn't sound intelligent. Every time I'd come up with a poetic image I'd be shouted down. "

We've had instances of lyricists trying to sound more poetic than they are capable of being. This is the first occasion when a poet actually had to scale down his skills to accommodate the character's intellect.