Mumbai, July 19, 2025
Music composer Pritam, who has brought the charms of Bollywood music with his recent album ‘Metro…In Dino’, is going back in time, and tracing the roots of his creative partnership with his frequent collaborator Anurag Basu, the director of ‘Metro…In Dino’.
Pritam recently spoke with IANS, and shared that the two connected for the first time almost 27 years ago when both of them were new to the market and were exploring the space of television shows.
He told IANS, “First time, I collaborated with Anurag was in 1998. I had a friend who introduced me to Anurag and said that we are making a serial about ghosts. He used to do a lot of serial that time.
So, I did the title song on Zee TV. Then, he was making films, he did ‘Murder’, which was a huge hit. He became a successful director after ‘Murder’. And then I did ‘Dhoom’. I became a successful music director after ‘Dhoom’. So, that’s when he connected with me. That’s how we did ‘Gangster’”
Both ‘Murder’ and ‘Dhoom’ released in the same year. While the music of ‘Murder’ was done by Anu Malik, ‘Dhoom’ was directed by Sanjay Gadhvi.
‘Gangster’ marked the first cinematic collaboration between Pritam and Anurag.
Pritam further mentioned, “Then we kind of shifted to the same building, staying in the same building. And we got very well connected and like we became friends. We used to regularly meet in that common passage of the building. And so I did ‘Gangster’ with him”.
However, it was not ‘Gangster’ which excited the composer in him, it was their second film ‘Life in a Metro’. Incidentally, Anurag narrated both the films to him one after the other.
Pritam said, “I remember he narrated ‘Gangster’ and ‘Life in a Metro’ together. I got very excited when I heard the narration for ‘Life in a Metro’ because of the structure of its screenplay, you know that hyperlinked structure”.
“My diploma film from FTII was also based on the hyperlink structure. I was immediately drawn to ‘Life in a Metro’, it was a different animal”, he added.(Agency)
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