Mile Sur Mera Tumhara Reimagined

Seventy NRIs in San Francisco’s Bay Area in the US got together to recreate the 1980s classic patriotic song that seems to be connecting with everyone.
Mile Sur Mera Tumhara Reimagined

HYDERABAD: It’s a song we all know and can hum.  Even today, it gives us goosebumps to sing along in our language for this melodious patriotic song. Anil Gaur from San Francisco Bay Area in California, US, also felt the same. Except that he decided to reimagine Mila Sur Mera Tumhara with a few additions, add the NRI tadka and release it online. That’s how the song titled NRI Mile Sur Mera Tumhara took birth. Released online in YouTube and other social media on January 24, 2021, it has already garnered over 165K views in two days.

An IT Executive by profession, but a filmmaker at heart, director Anil Gaur says, “This is the song of togetherness, this is the song of India. It is a celebration of how people from different backgrounds, who have made homes outside India, weave Indian heritage into their family life, creating bridges across people of all ages. It reflects a cultural unity in its vast diversity.” 

Anil states that it took more than 70 people from the San Francisco (SF) Bay Area to work on this project. “Everyone was nostalgic about the original version and the fact that we were remaking it generated a lot of interest. Even Gen X joined us and that’s why we also have a rap and Bollywood bit in it so that it can resonate with millennials too.”  Anil has previously made award-winning short films and his brand called Random Drifts. They were fortunate to have two singers, Shreedhar Ganapathy and Shubha Chaki, who could sing in each of the 14 languages. 

The musical with an NRI perspective also shows familiar landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge, beaches and other locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. The locations were strategically chosen to align with the culture, lyrics and background score. Due to Covid restrictions, the team had to change some of the shooting locations. “Having to collaborate while not being able to meet up in a studio on music, especially with the singers and the sound engineer was a challenge. Technology of course helps. Over phone calls, WhatsApp, email conversations, we exchanged ideas and back and forth until we were all satisfied with the outcome. What typically could have taken a few hours ended up taking days,” he tells Express over the phone. 

“We NRIs, especially in SF have seen political unrest, fire in California, pandemic, Covid-19 deaths and much more. Due to social distancing, I felt that the community sentiment was low and wanted to do something to get back the bonding, so that we can lift everyone’s spirits. I wanted to do something of this scale. So we chose this song with 14 languages and featured real people — Indians who represented various states of India,” he adds.

The project took two and half months from conception to post-production and final release. “Whoever heard about the idea, came on board. They reached out to their social networks in their own groups. That’s how we found our tabla player and rap artist,” he says about the video that features people as young as a 17-month-old baby from Jammu and Kashmir to a middle-aged Telugu couple, Sailaja and Sreenivas Reddy and 70-plus Murali Krishnamurthy, founder of Shankara Eye Foundation. In fact, they even found an NRI pilot who volunteered to fly a plane for the video. What was the kind of money spent on it? “Only time and love,” he quips. 

— Manju Latha Kalanidhi
 kalanidhi@newindianexpress.com @mkalanidhi

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