Ye jo halka halka suroor hai
Posted on: March 16, 2025
This article is written by Sadananad 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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The film’s title, ‘Fanney Khan’ (2018) with its star cast created interest in me when the film was formally announced. Just as the name ‘Natwarlal’ is identified with a conman, ‘Fanney Khan’ is identified with a man who boasts of his high achievements but in reality, others do not consider him as such. However, in the teaser of ‘Fanney Khan’ (2018), the meaning of ‘Fanney Khan’ has been explained in the context of the film as ‘someone who is an artist, a musician, a dreamer or even a complete idiot’. My interest in the film waned on reading the adverse reviews of the film after the film got a theatrical release on August 4, 2018. After a gap of nearly six years of the film’s release, I am liking a couple of songs from this film. So, I watched the film on a video sharing platform. It is nearly six months after I watched the film, I thought of writing an article on the film covering one of the songs I liked.
‘Fanney Khan’ (2018) was jointly produced by Bhushan Kumar (T Series), Anil Kapoor and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. The film was directed by the debutant, Atul Manjrekar who had earlier assisted Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra in his films ‘Aks’ (2001) in ‘Rang De Basanti’ (2006) in post-production works. Anil Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Rajkumar Rao were in main roles with the supporting cast of Divya Dutta, Pihu Sand, Girish Kulkarni, Asif Basra, Satish Kaushik etc. The story of the film was legitimately adapted from Oscar-nominated Belgium film, ‘Everybody’s Famous’ (2000).
The story of the film is as under:
Prashant Sharma (Anil Kapoor), a factory worker, is a part time singer in an orchestra. He has a dream of becoming a professional singer. But his financial position coupled with losing his job in a factory has shattered his dream. In his locality, he is being called as Fanney Khan for his unattainable dreams. He now concentrates on making his teenage daughter, Lata (Pihu Sand) another Lata Mangeshkar in the making. Lata, on the other hand, is the fan of Baby Singh (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), a top celebrity singer and fond of pop songs while Prashant wants her to trained in singing old type of songs. For this, Lata ridicules her father.
After losing his job, Prashant works as a taxi driver to promote Lata for singing competition. Despite her good voice, she is not able to get entries in the singing competitions. On the contrary, she is body shamed for being a fat girl. For making a promotional video of her song, Prashant requires at least Rs.15-20 lakhs and his wife (Divya Dutta) sarcastically says that it would take him 50 years to have that kind of money as a taxi driver.
Celebrity singer, Baby Singh is fed-up with her stardom status leaving her no time to retrospect her life. She tells her Manager, Kakkad (Girish Kulkarni) that she needs a break while traveling in her car. Instead, Kakkad suggests her for a deliberate malfunctioning of her costume on her next ramp show for increasing TRP. She gets terribly annoyed with Kakkad suggestion and leaves her car in a huff. She signals a taxi which happens to be that of Prashant. Since he requires at least Rs.15-20 lakhs to make Lata’s promotional video song, in the spur of the moment, Prashant kidnaps Baby Singh. Having done so, Prashant does not know what next to do. He telephones to his best colleague in the factory, Adhir (Rajkumar Rao) of the kidnapping and seeks his help in keeping Baby Singh under his protective custody in a room of now closed factory. Because of the emotional blackmail, Prashant very reluctantly agrees. Baby Singh is brought to his former factory room and her hands and legs are tied to a chair. Prashant telephones to Baby Singh’s manager Kakkad and demands ransom, details of which he will give him in his next telephone call.
Since Baby Singh’s ramp show has been scheduled to be held in less than a week, the producer of the show, Vivek (Asif Basra) suggests Kakkad to settle the issue of ransom as early as possible. Kakkad meets Prashant who has worn a face mask resembling Rajnikant to hide his face. He gives Kakkad a pen drive containing the tune and the lyrics and tells him to make a promotional video of the song to be sung by Lata. And this is his ransom. Kakkad is amused but he agrees to Prashant’s demand.
In the factory room, in a couple of days, a friendship between Baby Singh and Adhir develops to such an extent that one day Adhir takes her out in the night without the knowledge of Prashant. She forces Adhir to bring her dog from her house without which she would not eat anything. Reluctantly, he goes to her flat and brings with him her dog. Soon, the news of kidnapping of Baby Singh and her dog is flashed on the TV channels. The album producer, Vivek takes the opportunity to release Baby Singh’s new song album which gets a high TRP due to the sympathy waves for Baby Singh.
In the meantime, Kakkad telephones to Lata inviting her to the recording studio to get her promotional song recorded. Lata is pleasantly surprised. She goes and record the song. Prashant is very happy. Kakkad telephones to Prashant to inform him that in the absence of Baby Singh, the organiser of ‘India Ki Aawaaz’ contest has decided to give chance to Lata to sing in the contest. He, however, put a condition that till the contest is over, Baby Singh should not be released. To ensure that condition, Prashant goes to the factory room to check and finds that Baby Singh and Adhir have disappeared.
In the ‘India Ki Aawaaz’ contest, Lata is getting ready to sing which is being telecast live. In between, the breaking news is flashed that the police has surrounded the factory room after getting the information that Prashant is holed up here with Baby Singh. After watching the breaking news, Kakkad immediately telephones to Prashant to convey the message to the police that he will shoot Baby Singh if anyone tries to storm in the room. As soon as the Lata’s singing in the contest is over, he would release Baby Singh and surrender himself to the police. Prashant conveys this message to police through a TV reporter who is covering the seize of the factory by the police team.
Lata’s singing at the contest gets over. Prashant Sharma comes out of the room with raised hands to surrender before the police, But the police team instead of arresting him, clap for him as another breaking news is flashed where Baby Singh and Adhir have posted their live video on a social media platform. The video shows that they are enjoying a boat ride in Dal Lake in Srinagar. Baby Singh reveals that she was not kidnapped but came to Srinagar with her live-in friend, Adhir and they have been here for the past one week to get a break from her busy schedule. Prashant is set free.
At the end, everybody is happy. Prashant has got his dream fulfilled. Lata has become a star singer having cross 50 million views of her debut song. Baby Singh is happy that she has got a break from her routine and has now got Adhir as her boyfriend. Adhir is also happy that he has got a good girlfriend as against his earlier girlfriend who was treating him like his maid servant after he lost the job.
As per the Box Office Report, the film was ‘disastrous’ at the box office after one month of its release. The film was intended to be a satirical one with light comedy. But it turned out to be a mixed bag of melodrama and comedy. For me, the best part of the film comes after Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is kidnapped. The scenes between her and Rajkumar Rao are interspersed with light humour specially when she comes to know that both Anil Kapoor and Rajkumar Rao are not professional kidnappers. The film also brings out the negative sides of music album industry in a satirical way.
The film had six songs written by Irshad Kamil (5) and Hasrat Jaipuri(1) which were set to music by Amit Trivedi (4) and Tanishk Bagchi (1). The song written by Hasrat Jaipuri was from another Hindi film, composed by Shankar-Jaikishan which has been covered on the Blog. I present the 2nd song, ‘ye jo halkaa halkaa suroor hai’ rendered by Sunidhi Chauhan and Divya Kumar. The song is written by Irshad Kamil and is set to music by Amit Trivedi. It is a background song picturised on Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Rajkumar Rao. The video clip of the song is as appeared in the film without interlude music. The audio clip is made up of promotional video/screenshots from the film with fast interlude music.
This song has two features. First, the song starts with antara and then switchovers to mukhda. Second, lyrics of the mukhda part of the song is predominantly taken from a non-film Sufi qawwali rendered by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan which has become very popular in Indian Sub-continent. The mukhda tune of the qawwali has been broadly retained by Amit Trivedi in the song under discussion. From the credit titles of the film, I did not find acknowledgement to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The link to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Qawwali is here.
The context of this background song in the film is that a high celebrity singer, Baby Singh (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) has been under the protective custody of Adhir (Rajkumar Rao) ever since she was kidnapped by Prashant Sharma (Anil Kapoor). Adhir has been treating her very nicely which Baby Singh has started enjoying as a break from her routine even if she is in his protective custody. During one of their chitchat session, Adhir asks Baby Singh whether she had any boyfriend to which she replies that her busy professional life has not given her time to have boyfriends. In fact, she cannot even hold anybody’s hand. Suddenly, she starts thinking that during the last few days, she has spent quality time with Adhir. The same feelings are with Adhir as well. They are in love with each other but cannot openly express as they are in extra-ordinary situation. These feelings are conveyed through this background song. The mukhda verses of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Sufi qawwali fit well in the situation. Rajkumar’s Rao’s innocent looking performance and Aishwarya Rai’s feelings of ‘freedom in captivity’ in the song picturisation reflects the roles of their respective characters.
No doubt, there is some element of plagiarism in the song. Still, I feel that music director, Amit Trivedi has done a commendable job in converting one of the most popular Sufi qawwali into a pop song with light orchestration, retaining the primacy of the lyrics. The prelude music sets the tone of the song. The antaras with additional lines to mukhda written by Irshad Kamil aptly convey the feelings of the characters for the given situation. A feature of Irshad Kamil’s lyrics is that there are few rhymed lines between male verses taken from the Qawwali and female verses added by Irshad Kamil as response from the female counterpart. Examples:
ye jo halkaa halkaa suroor hai
ye jo pehlaa pehlaa suroor hai
meraa ishq meraa fitoor hai
teraa ishq hai yaa fitoor hai
tere husn ko ye guroor hai
mere husn kaa ye qusoor hai
Sunidhi Chauhan and Divya Kumar have done a good job by conveying the feelings in the song through their voice modulations at appropriate places.
Video Clip (as appeared in the film):
Audio Clip (with promotional video/screenshots from the film):
Song-Ye jo halka halka suroor hai (Fanney Khan)(2018) Singers-Sunidhi Chauhan, Divya Kumar, Lyrics-Irshad Kamil, MD-Amit Trivedi
Lyrics (Based on Video Clip):
main dekhoon jo tujhko to pyaas badhe
tu roz
tu roz do ghoont chadhe
mujhse
tu na mujhse
kabhee bichhde
to roz
tu roz
do ghoont chadhe
ye jo halkaa halkaa suroor hai
ye jo pehlaa pehlaa suroor hai
meraa ishq meraa fitoor hai
teraa ishq hai yaa fitoor hai
maine khudko tujhpe lutaa diyaa
teraa hoke khudko mitaa diyaa
ye jo halkaa halkaa suroor hai
ye jo pehlaa pehlaa suroor hai
tere husn ko ye guroor hai
mere husn kaa ye qusoor hai
maine khudko tujhpe lutaa diyaa
teraa hoke khudko mitaa diyaa
tu har ek pehloo se khaas lage
tu paas hai aaj to pyaas lage
mehkee see tu koi mithaas lage
tu paas hai aaj to pyaas lage
ye jo halkaa halkaa suroor hai
ye jo pehlaa pehlaa suroor hai
meraa ishq meraa fitoor hai
teraa ishq hai yaa fitoor hai
maine khudko tujhpe lutaa diyaa
teraa hoke khudko mitaa diyaa
ye jo halkaa halkaa suroor hai
mere husn kaa ye qusoor hai
maine khudko tujhpe lutaa diyaa
teraa hoke khudko mitaa diyaa
teree chaah mein teree raah mein
teree behkee behkee nigaah mein
maine khudko tujhpe lutaa diyaa
aaaaaaaa
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
May 22, 2025 at 10:07 am
Atul ji,
This song is not listed on the Blog’s lists of ‘movie-wise’, ‘MD-wise’ and ‘Year-wise’.
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May 22, 2025 at 11:51 am
Updated.
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