India's earliest pop icon Baba Sehgal opened up abou how he was approached for the Hindi version of hit Tamil song Rukmani Rukmani during a performance in Chennai. The song was originally composed by AR Rahman for Mani Ratnam's 1992 movie Roja.
In a conversation with Siddharth Kannan, Baba Sehgal said, "I had a show in Chennai. Somebody from the organising team told me that some director wants to meet me. There was an assistant director who came and played Rukmani Rukmani’s Tamil version. I didn’t pay much attention to it and just said ‘yes’ to the song. AR Rahman was also there. He was very young at the time."
Baba further added that AR Rahman and his team requested him to help release the song. "I called my friend Atul and gave them Shashi Gopal’s number from Magnus Sound. They connected and eventually decided to do a Hindi version, on one condition that one song would be sung by me. I understood then that AR Rahman and Mani Ratnam didn’t really like me," he said.
"When I saw the Hindi lyrics, I was like, ‘Kitne vahiyat lyrics hai yaar. Kisne likha hai ye?’ (How cheap are these lyrics? Who wrote this?). The problem is, when we listen to songs in another language, they sound fine. But in our own language, we grasp the meaning. I don’t think Rahman or Ratnam knew what those Hindi lyrics meant," said Baba.
Sehgal went on to state that this was his only collaboration with AR Rahman. He said, "Another lady was called to sing the female lines. Later, I told Swetha Shetty to sing those too, and she nailed it. That was my first and last song with Rahman. Language was a problem. We never met after that."