Legendary R D Burman passed away in January 1994 ( 25 years ago) and hence was not around to witness the phenomenal success of his swan-song film album ‘1942-A Love Story’. It was a tough task for Rochak Kohli the composer of ‘Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga’, (starring Sonam Kapoor, Rajkummar Rao, Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla) while recreating a new song using the iconic hook-line from the original classic song from ‘1942 A Love Story’ (released 1994)composed by the legendary maestro R D Burman. Confides producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra, “ Rochak must have tried at least around 20 to 25 times to come up with the song which could perfectly match the situation and the lyrics while blending the haunting retro hook-line. This lilting line which was an ad-lib extempore lyrical composition by Javed Akhtar was ‘not’ supposed to be used in our retro-movie 1942-ALS .
“But it was Javed saab who was adamant and insisted that it should be included and he gave us the lyrics there and then out-of the-blue at the ‘sitting’. And the genius R D Burman effortlessly composed the song within six minutes. Now that we were revisiting the hook-line, I told Rochak not to tamper with the classic song, but only to play the notes of the ‘strings’ instrumental interlude,” discloses Chopra whose current movie directed by Shelly Chopra Dhar, sensitively deals with the touchy theme of same-gender-sexuality issues.