It took 26 long years for the two legends to come back together, thanks to debutant director Ajay Varma. Ajay Varma’s SRK, which is expected to release later this year, will have its music scored by Ilayaraja and lyrics penned by Gulzar. The duo last worked together for Balachandar’s Sadma which had some evergreen songs like Surmai Akhiyon Mein and Aye Zindagi. “His aptitude and skills for creating the perfect harmony have not altered at all. Ilayaraja is one of his kind. I wish he was heard more often in Hindi cinema,” said Gulzar on Ilayaraja. Ilayaraja’s last Hindi work was Cheeni Kum, which had met with reasonable success at the box office, though that didn’t help his cause in getting another Hindi movie over the past year or so.
Ajay Varma is from the family of legendary painter Raja Ravi Varma (who incidentally is the topic of Ketan Mehta’s upcoming movie Rang Rasiya). Contrary to the title, SRK is not about “SRK”, and instead stands for Shivaji R. Khote, the protagonist played by Vinay Pathak. It remains to be seen how much of his great forefather”s genes have passed on to Ajay, but he already is showing promise going by his esoteric choice regarding the music for his movie.
