Karan Johar’s career-making debut film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai released today 25 years ago.
Lalit Pandit feels the songs and music played a big hand in its success. “It is one of the best scores of my brother and I.It is an absolute personal favourite of mine and I remember it all clearly as if it all happened just yesterday.”
For Lalit what made KKHH the film specially memorable was the music. “KKHH was indeed a great film and had a completely different vibe from anything that happened earlier in the film industry.Karan Johar wrote a great script and directed brilliantly with his own personal style and brought a change to Indian cinema .It had a great story line,fantastic actors and produced lavishly from all point of views.But what makes a film really memorable eventually is its music.”
Lalit feels all great Hindi cinema must have memorable music. “All memorable films have to have a great musical score for it to be remembered and cherished .We can find many examples of this fact in the careers of superstars starting right from Dev Anand to Rajesh Khanna to Shah Rukh Khan.We remember these great actors even more because of the music they have had.”
KKHH came to Jatin-Lalit at a time when they were extremely busy . “ Jatin and I realised Karan Johar needed to be given special attention and time from us to deliver the score the film needed. Right from Karan’s narration it was clear this was The Film and it deserved great effort.”
Each song has memories attached to it. “The first song that was recorded was Koi mil gaya and Karan wanted that song first because it involved every character in the film as well as it would set the tone of the music the film required.I remember when I first sang out the tune to him he sort of liked it but thought it was very long.It indeed was!But I explained that he has a lot of kids singing along and each character will get lines to sing , etc.I was very happy to see that he had the confidence in us. I predicted, ‘Karan, the song will work great.’ When it got recorded Karan did tell me that he was very happy with the song and that all of them(assistants and actors )loved it. I was very happy too about it.”
The title song is hummed to this day. “It has a tempting timeless lilt to it. I am so proud that our title song of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is Karan Johar’s Dharma Production introductory music at the beginning of each film of theirs.”