'I Was Drunk': Javed Akhtar Reveals He Wrote This Popular Track in 9 Minutes

Javed Akhtar shared that he has written a couple of film songs within ten minutes.

Javed Akhtar reveals he wrote a popular track in nine minutes.

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Veteran lyricist Javed Akhtar recently revealed in an interview that he has written a couple of film songs within ten minutes. However, one of his massively popular tracks was written in just nine minutes.

Sharing the interesting anecdote behind the same, Akhtar also said that his wife, Shabna Azmi, often jokes that producers would refuse to pay him if they knew he wrote these songs in such a short time.

Akhtar, who was recently at the FICCI event in Kolkata, shared during a conversation, "I have written a handful of songs in under 10 minutes. After Silsila, Yash Chopra’s fourth assistant came to me and requested that I write the songs for his film. Of course, he didn’t have any money, but I agreed. I wrote the songs, but because I was working for free, one remained incomplete. That poor guy would come over every evening and ask for the song, and in those days, I used to drink."

The veteran further shared how he kept delaying the song until the last minute and added, "Every evening, we’d drink and chit-chat, and by 2 am, we’d decided that we would finish the song tomorrow. I kept delaying it, and then one day, the poor guy asked again. This was past midnight; after the eighth or ninth peg, I asked for a piece of paper and a pen and decided to get it over with."

"The reason I know for sure that I wrote that song in nine minutes is because he had to catch the last train, so he kept looking at his watch. I finished it in nine minutes and handed it over to him. Jagjit Singh sang the song, it was ‘Tum Ko Dekha To Yeh Khayal Aaya’. It was written at perhaps 12:30 in the night, after eight or nine pegs, in nine minutes."

Javed Akhtar

Akhtar is one of the most well-known lyricists in the Hindi film industry. He has written popular songs like 'Sandese Aate Hain,' 'Main Agar Kahoon,' 'Do Pal,' among many others.