Wielding his pen

With Baahubali 2—The Conclusion smashing all records, even in the Hindi version, the unsung hero remains the man who penned the super-evocative dialogues in that language: Manoj Muntashir.

A book of Sahir Ludhianvi’s verse inspired him to take up his interest — writing poems — as a profession. “From childhood, I was registering the words most when I heard any film song, and soon Sahir Ludhianvi and Shailendra became my favourites,” he says.

With the blessings of his parents, their only son, Manoj Shukla, left Amethi for Mumbai with just Rs 700 in his pocket. Later, when he bought a house in Mumbai, his father smiled and said, “Woh saat sau rupaye bahut rang laaye (Those 700 rupees have really been worth it!)”

Calling himself Manoj ‘Muntashir’ (‘a scattered soul’), he soon had a meeting with composer Sandesh Shandilya and a sitting with Ketan Mehta. This led to his signing Rang Rasiya in 2004, but the film was delayed by a decade!

Towards a big break

During his struggling phase, Manoj did a few small films, but his big break came when Amitabh Bachchan met him and initiated him into television as a scriptwriter on one, and finally, most seasons of Kaun Banega Crorepati. Many other shows followed, making Manoj one of the biggest names in non-fiction scriptwriting for television. But the primary dream of songwriting remained, assuaged by his getting to the title songs of many serials.

One day, as he was taking a walk in his neighbourhood, the complexities of all the lanes struck him, and he came up with a song, ‘Galliyan’, which soon emerged as the biggest chartbuster of 2014, as used in the film Ek Villain. Manoj had arrived in the real sense.

From there to becoming a busy lyricist who also dabbled in television (India’s Got Talent, Indian Idol Junior) for a while, Manoj has come a long way — without compromising on his art. His repertoire now includes songs in Baby, Rustom, M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, Naam Shabana (all with Neeraj Pandey), a song in PK, Ek Paheli Leela, Hate Story 3, Kapoor & Sons, Akira and many more, besides the next release, Half Girlfriend. He has also done albums and singles with Anu Malik, Himesh Reshammiya, Amaal Mallik, Sonu Nigam and more.

What got him Baahubali: The Beginning? “I was sitting with (composer) M M  Kreem in Hyderabad, reading out my nazm, ‘Main Tujhse Pyar Nahin Karta’ for Baby, when a man walked in, sat in a corner of the room and walked away 10 minutes later. A few days later, Kreem-sir called up and said that his cousin, director S S Rajamouli, wanted to meet me for the dialogues of his film, which was to be dubbed in Hindi. It was the same man.”

Manoj goes on, “I wondered whether I could do justice to the dialogues. But Rajamouli-sir assured me that I had a great grip on language. Only a genius can sense something that even I could not see in myself. He just said, ‘Let’s start working. Your fears will collapse!’ The filmmaker only had one request: that he would like my lines to go with the character’s lip movements as much as possible. And it was a request, not an order or a mandate.”

The biggest of them all

Without undue modesty, Manoj claims rightly that the extraordinary success of that film was largely because the film came across as a Hindi film rather than a dubbed Telugu film. With Baahubali 2..., it was easier, he feels. “I think I managed 80% lip-sync connect in both the dialogues and the songs.” The success of the earlier film obviously helped as well.

Why is the music of the sequel nowhere close to the original? “Frankly, every song in the two films was meant to go with the narrative and none were designed as chartbusters. But when we work on a film, we can never be objective, and I never thought that the music would finally be lesser in any way than that of the first one,” he says.

But Manoj is glad that the music of Baahubali 2... has rekindled a fresh and positive look at the first soundtrack that never got its due. Letting us into a secret, he informs that for him, the two parts were like one film. “It was an edit call. Some scenes were already written for the new film, and a couple of them shot with Baahubali’s first part,” he reveals.

Manoj is old-school in thought, and though he has to listen to market forces, he tries to keep a balance between creativity and the perceived (and usually flawed) concepts of success. “The thinking has changed,” he laments about his Mumbai films. “Now, film-makers prefer sound or phonetics to thought. They want a hook in each song. For me, this becomes boring. I am told ‘Galliyan’ was also a hook, but there was thought in it. I can give poetry where there is a hook with a thought. There is no point telling anyone that Sahir Ludhianvi never had a hook in the lyrics of ‘Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Mein Khayaal Aata Hai’.”

Secure in his skills, Manoj looks at such professional hazards as minor obstacles in his pursuit of excellence.