Lalit Pandit gets emotional; says, “Fanaa was the last film Jatin & I composed together,”.

The last film that Jatin-Lalit did together was Kunal Kohli’s Fanaa. Says Lalit emotionally, “The movie completed seventeen years today and it was just about sixteen years that Jatin and I worked together before we split in 2006. I look at Fanaa from a very special point of view and hold that film very close to my heart to tell the truth, we had split while the music of Fanaa was still work in progress. I had gone and met Adi and told him Jatin and Lalit will not be working together after this film.

Lalit says Fanaa producer Aditya Chopra tried to convince the brothers against the split. Adi was very upset, and he did call Jatin and me both to his place, spoke to us and advised that it was a terrible decision which was of course anticipated and understood by both of us. For about two years prior to this I was getting signs that us being together wouldn’t last long and it was terribly stressful.”

Remembering the split Lalit gets upset. “I wouldn’t like to elaborate further except, that since it was to be the last film, we would work together I wanted to give all I had to make this a score which would be remembered always. During the recordings itself Jatin had stopped coming to the studio gradually after his only song in the film Des Rangila got recorded. I, with the rest of the team and director Kunal Kohli kept working on the rest of the songs and we worked really hard to achieve the quality that eventually emerged in Fanaa’s music.”

However, despite the split the show went on for Lalit. “The good thing was the studio was always available for me since it was a YRF home production. Incidentally Fanaa was also the first film that was recorded in the new YRF studio, and no one was really sure how the sound would be. It did take months of studio work for me to finalise the mixes of all the songs. I had it in my heart that since this was to be the last film of a big brand name Jatin-Lalit’s last musical score it would have to be the best score of the year.”

Eventually Fanaa did get nominated for best score and for the song ‘Chand Sifarish’, it won all the awards that year for Shaan as best singer.

Recalls Lalit, “When the best music award went to A R Rehman in his speech, he did say he was sad to know that Jatin and Lalit wouldn’t be working together again, that was sweet of him. When the final day of the mix was finished and Adi was supposed to hear the final product, we met in the evening and heard all the songs together. Everything sounded good and when Adi and I were going down from the recording studio he asked me, “Kya lagta hai music ka??” I told him, “Ye dil se nikla hai aur logon ke dil tak pahunchega.” . As time flew by, the music of Fanaa was a huge success and Adi called me and said, “Guess what? Fanaa is the highest selling music for YRF”. It was so good to hear that I will never forget it. Bhagwan ne hamari izzat Rakh li! My brother and I are perhaps the only musical jodi that ended our carrier right at its peak.”