Q, Tell me about this iconic Ganpati song from Agneepath that people talk about. How did it come about? What was the idea?
A. This song was actually conceived by Karan Malhotra. Because the song had very little dancing and a lot of storytelling. When Karan told me the script, he narrated the entire screenplay of how the song was going to be placed and in which context. According to that, I choreographed the song. When I composed it with my wife Rekha, we thought of having a bit of dancing in it but somehow Karan said no—dancing would not be suitable for this situation. He could, however, play a dhol. The puja and arti that Hrithik performs—he hadn’t done that before in any of his films. He hadn’t even played a dhol before. So we thought, let’s depict him like that rather than make him dance.
Q, How big was the set-up?
A. We had a larger-than-life crowd—huge numbers of people, including dancers. It was a big setup, probably around 600–700 people inside that chawl. When we came for the shoot on day one, Karan wasn’t happy with the decoration, so he cancelled the shoot. He told the art director that he wanted more grandeur and asked what could be done. The entire cast and crew were ready, but the shoot was called off. Ganapati Bappa remained the same, but many other things were changed. You remember that scene where kumkum falls like rainfall from above? It took us five days to select the powder and figure out how it should fall. We placed a vessel above Ganapati, and the dancers toppled it to create that effect.
Q. How do you look at Hrithik Roshan, the actor and the dancer? What was his input?
A. I have done at least two to three songs with him now. He has an excellent sense of rhythm. I have seen him grow—as an assistant director when we were doing Karan Arjun. He was a teenager at that time, sometimes coming for shooting as a clap boy. I knew from then that he is different, and he has a director inside him too. Even if he is just walking into a frame, it works.
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Q. So how long did it take to finish the song?
A. We did it in five days. We had three camera setups, and we were shooting on film. I still remember when we lifted the arti—like the Ganga arti, which is huge—there were hundreds of artis burning at the same time. Even if one arti got delayed, the person holding another could get burned; it starts heating up. We shot everything originally—no VFX. We actually lit the arti and had to ensure no smoke came from them; it had to be pure with ghee so that black smoke didn’t appear.