About a decade-and-a-half ago, Mohit Suri and Mithoon started their journey together with Zeher, a 2005 mystery thriller. While Suri was wearing the hat of a director for the first time, Mithoon was sitting at the desk of a composer. The duo collaborated once again for Kalyug (2006) and subsequently on several other projects including Aashiqui 2, which wasn’t only a blockbuster at the box office but also proved to be a musical hit with songs like Tum Hi Ho and Sunn Raha Hai topping the charts across various platforms in India and winning Mithoon dozens of awards.
However, one of the tunes that Mithoon had then created didn’t make it to the film but continued to remain close to his as well as Arijit Singh’s heart, so much so that they finally released it recently as an independent non-film song titled Intezaar. Written and composed by Mithoon and sung by Singh and Asees Kaur, the song is produced by VYRL Originals, a platform EMI Records India launched along with Mohit Suri. And, within 24 hours, the song registered 2.5 million views on YouTube. At the launch of the song, we sat down for a chat with Mithoon and Mohit Suri. Excerpts:
How did it all start? Where did you guys meet?
Mohit Suri: Mithoon’s father (Naresh Sharma, a leading expert of musical arrangements) and Mukeshji (Mukesh Bhatt, Suri’s maternal uncle) know each other very well, they had worked together on Aashiqui (1990). So, when I was working on my first feature film, Zeher, people weren’t taking me seriously and were refusing to work with me saying that children don’t make films. Eventually, I met Mithoon, who was 19-year-old then and was doing background score on some other film. I saw him sitting on programming machine and I don’t know how, but it worked from thereon. He created Woh Lamhe in Zeher and Aadat in Kalyug.
Mithoon: We started at the same time, with the same film. When he saw me I wasn’t composing, I was pretending to compose.
Tell us about Intezaar. Did you compose it during Aashiqui 2? How did it come into being now?
Mithoon: I always react to a situation and Mohit’s brief for Intezaar was – ‘hoping against hope and waiting for something’. I got the mukhda (chorus) about six years ago when we were working on Aashiqui 2 and Arijit Singh had even dubbed it then, but we didn’t use it for the film. However, we all had it in our hearts.Years later, when VYRL was launched, we went back to the song and revisited the entire emotion.
MS: I don’t believe there is a good song or bad song, I believe there is a right situation for every song. Somehow, Intezaar didn’t fit into the scheme of the progression that we were looking at for
Aashiqui 2, but it was one tune that Arijit never gave up on. He kept saying that this tune has got something. Years later, when we heard it again, it was refreshing. Actually, that is the thing about Mithoon’s music, it never gets outdated. I always tell people, Mithoon’s music is like whiskey, you can’t stop at one.