Kuchh mere dil ne kahaa
Posted on: February 13, 2024
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in other sites without the knowledge and consent of the web administrator of atulsongaday.me, then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
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In this article, I have taken up for discussion, ‘Tere Mere Sapne’ (1996) which was the first Hindi film produced by Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL) after it commenced operations sometime in 1994. Before I discuss the film, it is necessary to dwell upon as to why Amitabh Bachchan felt setting up a film production and distribution company, how the Company fared and how the Company went into near bankruptcy. I think, ABCL is one of the appropriate case studies for the students of business management to understand what went wrong with ABCL and how Amitabh Bachchan turned the corner from near bankruptcy to the star of the millennium.
ABCL was set up by Amitabh Bachchan as a private limited company with a view to bringing a corporate culture in film production and distribution which hitherto was mostly confined to the individuals or sole proprietorship firms. The Company commenced business in 1994 and was professionally managed under a CEO and other senior professionals recruited from the market. It produced TV Serial, ‘Dekh Bhai Dekh’ (1993-94). ‘Tere Mere Sapne’ (1996) was ABCL’s first Hindi film produced with a small budget which was a semi hit. It also earned profit in the distribution of the film, ‘Bombay’ (1995). During the course of its business operations, the Company diversified into event management, talent management and TV marketing.
During the first year of its operations, the Company made a net profit of Rs.15 crore on a paid-up capital of around Rs. 60 crore which was a good beginning. Buoyed by the first year of the encouraging result, ABCL ventured into high budget films in line with the Company’s aspirations to become a big player in the film making and the distribution. To achieve this, it required huge cash-flows to finance the new film projects. During this period, ABCL also got rights to host Miss World Pageant, 1996 for the first time in India. Banks were ready to lend money to the ABCL against the personal guarantee of its major owner, Amitabh Bachchan whose brand value was high.
With loans from a consortium of banks, ABCL produced films in quick succession such as ‘Mrityudaata’ (1997), ‘Saat Rang Ke Sapne’ (1998), ‘Major Saab’ (1998) and ‘Aks’ (2001). In addition, it produced regional films, ‘Yuvathurki’ (1996, Malayalam) and ‘Ullaasam’ (1998, Tamil). Some of Hindi films were the ‘come back’ projects for Amitabh Bachchan. Barring ‘Major Saab’ (1998) which was a ‘semi hit’, all other films flopped at the box office, putting a strain on the cash-flows of the Company. While the Miss World Pageant was successfully completed, at the end, ABCL was reported to have incurred financial losses in hosting the event.
Within less than 5 years of its operations, ABCL was in a financial mess. By the end of 1999, its net worth was wiped out with a debt of Rs.90 crores. In an interview given by Amitabh Bachchan sometime in 2013, which appeared in many newspapers and magazines including India Today, he had said that at one time, ABCL’s debt was around 90 crores. Almost all the debt were raised against his personal guarantee. He had no wherewithal to repay. Creditors were lining up in his house, some threatening, some abusive and some even with court order for auctioning of his then residence, ‘Prateesksha’. It was at that time, ABCL approached BIFR to be listed as a sick company in order to get immunity from creditors for some time.
It was a temporary relief. Amitabh Bachchan needed to find a solution to the repayment of debt. At the spur of the moment, he walked down from his house to the residence of Yash Chopra and requested him to take him in his film. ‘Mohabbatein’ (2000) which was at the time in the planning stage. Yash Chopra obliged, and the film became a superhit upon its release. For Amitabh Bachchan, it was more of a moral strength which facilitated gaining his brand value. This success of the film also paved the way for offer from Star TV to host quiz-based reality show, ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ (2000) for 85 episodes for which he got Rs.15 crore. The stardom which he had almost lost on the big screen got it back through small screen. Amitabh Bachchan repaid ABCL’s debt with interest to all his creditors with the success of ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’, the advertising and endorsement fees and with the success of his subsequent films.
ABCL was restructured and renamed as Amitabh Bachchan Corporation. ABC has been in the business of producing films such as ‘Virruddh’ (2005), ‘Paa’ (2009), ’Shamitabh’ (2015), ‘Sarkaar 3’ (2017), ‘Goomar’ (2023) etc. It has also produced a few regional language films. ABC had learnt a lesson that the film production and distribution is a high-risk business. So, it is better to produce and distribute the films by joining hands with one or two more film producing and distribution companies with financial strength. Hence, almost all the films produced by ABC after 2005 were jointly with other film producing companies.
In the hindsight, one can say that Amitabh Bachchan was quite ahead of time in bringing the corporate culture in the film production and distributions business. Today, he must be a satisfied person to note that what he did for bringing corporate culture to film productions and distribution business in 1996 has now been operationalised to a large extent. Most of the major film producers and distributors, such as Dharma Productions Pvt Ltd (Karan Johar), Red Chillies Entertainment Pvt Ltd (Shah Rukh Khan), Yash Raj Films (Aditya Chopra), Viacom 18 Studios, RSVP Movies, (formerly UTV Motion Pictures, Ronnie Screwvala), Amir Khan Productions Pvt Ltd, Cape of Good Films (Akshay Kumar), Ajay Devgan Films, Salman Khan Films, Ashutosh Gowariker Productions Private Ltd, Reliance Entertainment etc are corporate entities.
Coming back to the film, ‘Tere Mere Sapne’ (1996), the debutant, Joy Augustine directed the film. The cast included the newcomers, Arshad Warsi, Chandrachur Singh, Priya Gill and Simran with Pran, Sulabha Arya, Bal Dhuri, Suresh Mathur, Manoj Pahwa. K D Chandran, A K Hangal etc. The story of the film seems to have been inspired from the novel ‘The Prince and the Pauper’ by Mark Twain (1882).
The story of the film is as under:
The film starts with Amitabh Bachchan narrating the background of the plot. Two boys are born on the same day – Rahul Mehta (Chandrachur Singh) born in a wealthy family settled in England and Balu (Arshad Warsi) born in a middle class South Indian brahmin family in Mumbai. Rahul’s parents had died when he was young. He has been brought up by his industrialist grandfather, Sambhunath Mehta (Pran). Balu on the other hand has been brought up in a brahmin family culture but he does not seem to have adopted that culture. Because of this, his father (K D Chandran) has been in logger head with him though his mother (Sulabha Arya) always defends him against his father.
The story is fast forwarded to 21 years later. Rahul wants to make a visit to India to see his parents’ grave (his mother was a Hindu, and his father was a Christian). But his grandfather is against it as he is afraid that he may also fall in love and get lost like his parents. After much cajoling by his manager, Ram Singh (Bal Dhuri) who will accompany Rahul during his visit to India, Rahul is allowed to travel to India. At the Mumbai airport, Rahul ditches Ram Singh and take a taxi driven by Balu.
During their taxi drive, Balu speaks bad thing about the rich boy who has come to India who has been born on the same day as he was but poor. Rahul reveals himself as the same rich boy and Balu is ashamed of what he said earlier. But both Balu and Rahul become friends. In his plans, Rahul has already decided not to go back to England as he is fed up with his rich but lonely life. To carry out his plan, Rahul offers Balu to exchange their places in the society. So, Rahul becomes a taxi driver and Balu becomes a rich Rahul. Rahul sends Balu to his Manager who has a tough time to groom Balu to behave like a rich Rahul.
With the exchange taking places, Rahul goes to Balu’s place and stays near their house. Here he falls in love with Parvati (Priya Gill) who is the sister of Balu. On the other hand, Balu in the role of Rahul attends a meeting of Mehta Industries, called by Mathur (S P Malhotra) who is in-charge of the company which is facing some labour troubles due to mismanagement. Balu falls in love with Mathur’s daughter, Pooja (Simran).
During a meeting with the management of the Mehta Group of Industries, the union leader (A K Hangal) discusses with Balu, acting as Rahul, the problems faced by the labourers because of the lock-out of the factory. Balu agrees to reopen the factory and decides to distribute a part of the profit among the labourers.
When Parvati’s father learns of the love affairs of Rahul with his daughter, he fumes as Rahul is not a Brahmin. Somehow, Balu manages the situation by telling Rahul to become a brahmin. On the other side, Sambhunath feels that all is not well in Mumbai with Rahul. He visits India to take the stock of the situation in his factory. With company’s control likely to go out of Mathur’s hand, he engages a gangster to kidnap Sambhunath to sign the papers handing over the factory to them. In time, Balu in the role of Rahul comes and tells Mathur that he is Rahul, and he would sign whatever papers, knowing well that he is not Rahul. Someone informs the real Rahul that his grandfather has been kidnapped by Mathur. Rahul and Balu join hands to successfully repulse Mathur’s plan and get Rahul’s grandfather freed. The film ends with Rahul and Balu marrying Parvati and Pooja, respectively.
‘Tere Mere Sapne’ (1996) had six songs written by Anand Bakshi and set to music by Viju Shah. I am presenting the first song from the film, ‘kuchh mere dil ne kahaa’ to appear on the Blog. The song is rendered by Hariharan and Sadhana Sargam. It is a love song when Rahul (Chandrachud Singh), a neighbour of Parvati (Priya Gill) falls in love with each other. The song is picturised on them as their imaginations.
The highlight of this song is that it has a mix of Carnatic music probably, in keeping with the fact that Parvati is a South Indian girl. The use of violin in orchestrations as well as in the visuals gives an interesting fusion of Hindi and South Indian films songs. The song picturisation is also interesting with some scenes having shot against the sunlight.
Video Clip:
Audio Clip:
Song-Kuchh mere dil ne kahaa (Tere Mere Sapne)(1996) Singers-Hariharan, Sadhana Sargam, Lyrics-Anand Bakshi, MD-Viju Shah
Both
Lyrics
hmm hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm
he ae ae ae ae ae
kuchh mere dil ne kahaa
kuchh tere dil ne kahaa..aa
kuchh mere dil ne kahaa
kuchh tere dil ne kahaa
ab hum kyaa kahen kyaa sunen
jab dil baaten karne lagen
ab hum kyaa kahen kyaa sunen
jab dil baaten karne lagen
aa aa aa aa aaaa
aa aa aa aa aaa
aa aa aa aa aaa
aa aa aa aa aaaaa
aa aa aa aa aaa
o ye dil bezubaan thhaa
aaj isko zubaan mil gayi
o o o meri zindagi ko
ek haseen daastaan mil gayi
jeene kaa marne kaa
jeene kaa marne kaa
aayegaa ab mazaa…aa
kuchh mere dil ne kahaa
kuchh tere dil ne kahaa..aa
kuchh mere dil ne kahaa
kuchh tere dil ne kahaa
ab hum kyaa kahen kyaa sunen
jab dil baaten karne lagen
ab hum kyaa kahen kyaa sunen
jab dil baaten karne lagen
ae ae ae ae ae
aa aa aa aa aa
ha aa aa aa aa
ha aa aa aa aa
ho tujhse mil ke jaanaa
kitni tanha thhi main tere bin
ho o o pal pal kaisi halchal
zindagi mein hai ab raat din
main kahoon aur kyaa
main kahoon aur kyaa
bas tera shukriyaa.. aa
kuchh mere dil ne kahaa
kuchh tere dil ne kahaa aa
kuchh mere dil ne kahaa
kuchh tere dil ne kahaa
ab hum kyaa kahen kyaa sunen
jab dil baaten karne lagen
o o o ab hum kyaa kahen kyaa sunen
jab dil baaten karne lagen
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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