Ankur Tewari on bringing alive the idea of temptation with the music of Gehraiyaan

Shakun Batra’s latest _Gehraiyaan_, set to release on Amazon Prime Video on 11 February, is being touted as a modern-day relationship drama. When the film’s trailer dropped, one of the biggest talking points around the film was its intimate scenes between the lead characters Deepika Padukone and Siddhant Chaturvedi. The other was film's music.

The album is already a rage, due to the soundtrack’s innate synchronisation with the aesthetic of the film’s visuals, which also star Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa in the quartet.

The film’s music and original score is composed by independent musical duo Kabeer Kathpalia (OAFF) and Savera Mehta. However, musician Ankur Tewari, who also wrote the lyrics for the title song is being credited as the music supervisor for Gehraiyaan. Over a Zoom call, Tewari explained his role was to monitor the score and soundtrack artists while marrying the musical palate into a cohesive theme for the film.

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Be it ‘Gehraiyaan’ or ‘Doobey’, the songs — with lyrics by Tewari and Kausar Munir — have captured the essence of love, attraction and perhaps even infidelity to rousing effect.  But what exactly was Batra’s brief to Tewari for sound design?

“The script does have a very interesting gaze on modern-day relationships, on the idea of temptation. So the approach on looking at people going through a very transactional relationship, understanding where everyone is coming from, owing to your flaws, all of these was a part of our discussions. Also, the songs are introduced during the various phases of the film, so we had a very good bible for the script. And the characters are well edged so it was not that difficult to extract the clues of what songs would be.

The arc that Shakun and Ayesha have written is quite straightforward and simple, for you can see it very clearly of how somebody gives in to the temptation and of how they fall into the relationship and how it unfolds. As far as the title track is concerned, when I wrote the lyrics, I wanted to focus on the temptation part - it could be of anything, of good food or a partner, it could be about giving in to something you know that is not good for you, and yet diving into it,” Tewari says.

So did the actor’s justify to music’s intimacy?

“It was actually reverse. The music came later. We saw the scenes first and then matched the vibe with music. All the actors are so brilliant in the film. The way Deepika and Siddhant have owned their parts. Ananya doesn’t feel like she’s just a few films old, it feels as if she’s been acting for a while. It doesn’t feel like it is Dhairya’s first major project. The way they are so confident and comfortable with one another. So we saw the rushes, we saw the scenes, we saw the edits and that’s when we started working on the songs. Before that we were just creating a vibe, rough sketches, collecting references and creating a palette, but the actual work started after seeing their performances and in fact, I feel I was going in a different direction before seeing the sequences, hence then I had to pull back myself and recalibrate with what these guys did.”

However, the title song of Gehraiyaan is actually adapted from an earlier English song that Kabeer and singer Lothika Jha composed called Frontline, created when the latter was dealing with the loss of a family member. It’s amazing to see how the same pieces have been translated so differently and used to express such contrasting emotions.

Tewari admits that it was possible only because both pieces of music had a common thread of loss woven within them. “I felt the song didn’t move away from the essence of what it really was in the beginning, even when we were telling a different story altogether; it was a different kind of loss and gaze, but there exits sadness and grief in the song. However, while writing the lyrics, maybe we have countered the grief with confusion because sometimes when you lose someone, it leaves you confused and makes you not fully conscious of where you are and what you should do next.”

It seems that the effort paid off for the music for its blaring everywhere on the internet. With the advent of Instagram reels, the songs have been used to convey many different stories - of beaches, of many aesthetic travel vlogs and even for comedic content. When asked his response to the Instagram culture, Tewari laughs in affirmation. “I found it was interesting that some people were cutting tandoori momos to ‘Tu marz hai dawa bhi’ (laughs) it is amazing. I definitely feel it is a fascinating way to express music and I always believe everyone sees their own story in whatever song they hear, they tend to find themselves in it. Reels are one of the ways where they try to discover their own selves.”

Gehraiyaan will release on 11 February on Amazon Prime Video.