Malaika Arora was initially apprehensive about taking up Dil Se song ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’. The actress revealed that she had no idea that she had to shake a leg with Shah Rukh Khan on top of a moving train.
Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se is still remembered for Shah Rukh Khan-Malaika Arora’s iconic song ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ which was filmed on top of a moving train. For the unversed, Raveena Tandon was the first choice for popular track. However, the actress turned down the offer as she didn’t want to get labelled as the ‘item girl’. Thus, Raveena’s loss turned out to be Malaika’s gain as the song made the latter an overnight sensation.
However, do you know that Malaika was skeptical about taking up this song as she had no idea about what was in store for her? In an interview with Karan Thapar for BBC, Malaika had shared that choreographer Farah Khan called Arbaaz Khan (her ex husband) and told him everything about the song and it was Arbaaz who told her about it.
She had said, “I was very skeptical. Extremely skeptical because I had no idea what was in store for me. I said ‘are you sure,’ and he said ‘there is Shah Rukh Khan, Mani Ratnam, AR Rahman. I think you should be a part of this.’ I said ok, let’s give it a shot.”
Malaika had also revealed that she was unaware that she and SRK was supposed to film the number on top of a moving train, adding that she had had initially refused to climb on top of the train but eventually did it after almost 24 hours.
“They did not tell me it was on a moving train. It was just said that we are shooting on a train. I love dancing, dancing is something which is in my veins and I really enjoy it. When we went there, the whole thing was shot in Ooty and I saw everybody on top of the train, which was strange. And I refused to get on and the first couple of hours I said no. It took me about 24 hours to get on that train and muster up some courage and say ‘I can do this. Once I was up there, couldn’t get me down then,” the Dabangg actress had opened up in her interview.
With lyrics by Gulzar and music by AR Rahman, ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ has vocals by Sukhwinder Singh and Sapna Awasthi. Talking about Dil Se, the film revolves around a radio broadcaster who enchanted by a mysterious woman, steps into a divided world with deep wounds and looming threat of insurgency.
