Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla of India has gone on a historic journey of space. After waiting for several days, today when Shubhanshu, along with his 3 more colleagues, left the Axiom-4 mission, the eyes of the Indians glowed. Shubhanshu has to travel for about 28 hours to reach the international space station. On the other hand, when the journey of Shubhanshu took place, the fans of superstar Shah Rukh Khan got another chance to be happy. Actually, at the beginning of his historical space journey, Shubhanshu was listening to the song ‘Yun Hi Chal Chal Rahi’ from Shah Rukh Khan’s iconic film ‘Swades’.
An interesting coincidence is that while Shah Rukh Khan played a NASA scientist in ‘Swades’, NASA also has an important contribution in the mission on which Shubhanshu has come out. Talking about the song, ‘Yun Hi Chale Chal Rahi’ is one of those Hindi songs which are considered perfect for a trip. But do you know that this song was actually composed for Aamir Khan’s film, not Shah Rukh?
A song of trips
The character of Shah Rukh living a good life in ‘Swades’, Mohan Bhargava returns to India in memory of his grandmother. His plan is that he will return to the US with his grandmother. On returning to India, when Mohan starts a journey for his village, he gets a fakir on the way. While traveling with this fakir, he is heard by the song ‘Yun Chal Chal Rahi’ on the radio. The journey for which the lyrics written by Javed Akhtar are not a journey to go from one place to another. It is also a journey to meet a person himself. This is also a journey of a migrant to meet his soil and brings a lot of lessons with her.
Shahrukh’s character in the story of ‘Swades’ comes back for only a few days. But here, in seeing the problems of the people, solving them and fixing things, he gets involved in such a way that he starts connecting with his soil. At the end of ‘Swades’, Mohan Bhargava shifts back to India from the US. The way Javed Saheb records this entire journey is a sufiana feel. To these lyrics. AR Rahman had threaded these lyrics in a beautiful tune with the magic of his music, which people still start humming in a trip mood. But actually this tune was made by Rahman for some other film.
The tune was made for this film, not ‘Swades’
In an interview in 2010, Rahman had told that he had actually composed the tune of ‘Yun Hi Chale Chala Rahi’ many years ago. He prepared this tune when he was composing music for Aamir Khan’s memorable film ‘Lagaan’. He wanted to use this tune for a song of ‘Lagaan’, but this tune was not fit in that album.
The director of ‘Lagaan’ was Ashutosh Gowariker and when he started working on his next film ‘Swades’, he again took his favorite AR Rahman. And this time the tune came in the work of Rahman which he made for ‘Lagaan’. Javed Akhtar, who worked with Rahman in ‘Lagaan’, also came together once again and he wrote the lyrics that Shubhanshu Shukla was lukewarm for motivation while going to space.