Dehachi Tijori is mehfooz with reham from Khudaa....

Do successful TV stars become successful Movie stars? In Hollywood they may, but generally not so in Mumbai…with some notable exceptions like Smita Patil, Shah Rukh Khan etc. On the whole Indian TV stars haven’t really shattered the 70mm screen. 

In 2008 an interesting movie by the name of "Aamir" came out, starring Rajeev Khandelwal, a Television superstar then. The movie, devoid of any known big-screen stars didn’t do much on the box office, but it was a pretty slickly made one. I was engrossed for the entire 2 hours of it, watching the hero involuntarily get sucked deeper and deeper into the weave of the plot as it reached a nail biting crescendo. Definitely worth a watch. 

The film did not have any typical movie songs, but there was one – “Ha reham” (sounds very similar to ‘haarey hum’) that was used as a background score in one of the scenes that caught my fancy. The song, based on a soulful qawwal devotional tune composed by Amit Trivedi had a catchy beat concocted out of a ‘damaru’, a dholak, a harmonium and something that sounds like an ektara.

Sung by Amit Trivedi, Amitabh, Murtuza Qadir, this tune has a hymnical rhythm that gets into ones blood.

While listening to the original “Ha reham – mehfooz” song from Aamir, I got an idea to use the same beats for an immortal and beautifully penned Marathi bhaktigeet (devotional song) “Dehachi Tijori” composed and sung by Sudheer Phadke in the 1968 movie “Amhi jaato amchya gaava”. Both songs are not very different in their gist too, as it turns out. 

The result was an unusual fusion of a Khudaa from “Ha reham – mehfooz “ with a Vitthal in “Dehachi Tijori”.

As always, take my imperfect vocals with a pinch of salt. Click HERE to listen.

Cheers!