Pritam and Anurag Basu, brothers in songs

Mint

11-07-2025

In Hindi cinema, where full-fledged song sequences are quietly vanishing, Anurag Basu and Pritam remain proudly defiant. Their director-composer partnership—now two decades strong—has not just endured but deepened with time. Instead of chasing trends, they've doubled down on musicality. Their latest, Metro In Dino (released on 4 July), features more than 20 songs spread across two volumes. Half of them appear in the film as musical-style numbers—where characters sing their feelings instead of speaking them—a form Basu fully embraced in his misunderstood passion project Jagga Jasoos (2017).
Pritam may be known as a certified hit-machine, but it's with Basu that he is at his most experimental and playful. And whether it's Basu's darker phase pre-Barfi (2012) or his current brand of whimsy, Pritam has been there to give musical form to his ideas. (The only time Basu and Pritam did not work together was when the director was commissioned by the Roshans to make the 2010 film Kites).
Two days after Metro In Dino released, Lounge caught up with the duo over Zoom. Edited excerpts from the interview:
How did you two first meet?
Pritam: I had just finished FTII (Film and Television Institute of India) and was living in a 1RK in Thakur village, Kandivali. I'd set up a makeshift studio there. One day, a school friend called and said, 'You have to make a ghost song for a serial. It needs to be delivered in an hour." The director was Anurag. Kamlesh, who was writing the show, saw Anurag walk in wearing a red gamchha. This must have been around 1999 or 2000.
Basu: Maybe even 1998.
Pritam: Could be. That was my first memory of Anurag. Later, we did a lot of serials together—Manzilen Apni Apni, and others.
Basu: I still remember that tiny kitchen studio of yours— like 6x6ft—where you'd hung haanris (cooking vessels) to create reverb.
Pritam: And egg shells. I'd keep the speaker inside the haanri to boost bass—a trick from hostel days.
What was the serial with the ghost song?
Basu: I don't even remember the name or the channel. We were doing Gosaibaganer Bhoot, I think. A bunch of different ghosts singing together — very weird and fun.
So 'Gangster' came much later.
Pritam: Yeah, we had done quite a few shows before Gangster (2006). He was always busy. I remember Saraswati Puja in his old office. We were neighbours too, which helped.
Basu: I'd come home from work, call him and say, 'Up? Come down, let's have adda."
Pritam: There was this park in Vasant Galaxy between two wings with a swing—that's where I heard the scripts for Metro, Gangster…
You've worked together on films as varied as 'Gangster', 'Jagga Jasoos' and 'Life in a Metro'. What's your process?
Basu: Ever since I met Pritam, I've been pretending I have music sense.
Pritam: Lies! And I pretend I understand scripts. That's how it works.
Basu: Pritam does whatever he wants.
Pritam: Not true—I blindly follow Anurag. His briefs are clear and instinctive.
Basu: We hardly clash. We share the same ideas of right and wrong, good and bad.
Pritam: Also, there's shared musical history. For instance, Prithibi—by the Bengali band Mohiner Ghoraguli—or James, the Bangladeshi artist, Anurag already knew them. That blew my mind. He's from Bhilai, and yet he followed Bangla bands. During Ludo, he gave me a reference from Basu Chatterjee's films—a favourite of mine, which turned out to be one of his too. We speak the same musical language.
What kind of music do you listen to, Anurag?
Basu: Everything. Any genre, any language.
Pritam: He's musically very updated. Whatever's happening globally, he's on top of it. His thought process is very youthful. Many artists I love now, I discovered through him.
Was there any pushback to making 'Metro In Dino' almost a semi-musical?
Basu: We discussed it. The first 10 minutes are crucial—it sets the tone. Some people may feel lost, but it introduces the characters and tells you what kind of film it is.
Pritam: He broke the fourth wall right at the start. It was gutsy.
Basu: When Pritam first played me the songs, it was in Bengali. He usually composes in Bengali first.
Pritam: I need rough lyrics to sketch melody—mostly gibberish Bengali, sometimes Urdu. It's phonetic.
Are you drawing from Indian storytelling traditions more than Western ones?
Basu: Totally. Our films have always been musicals—even 1970s-1980s films had characters conversing through songs. We draw from traditions like jatra, nautanki, pandavani. Songs as storytelling.
Pritam: Today's filmmakers seem to lack confidence in that form. But we believe in it.
Basu: (Satyajit Ray's) Hirak Rajar Deshe is a huge inspiration. It shaped our childhoods.
Do you see 'Barfi' as a turning point? It seems to have unlocked something in both of you.
Pritam: For both of us, yes. Anurag was more angsty before. Post-Barfi, his tone shifted—sweeter, more hopeful.
Basu: Barfi softened the darkness in my films.
Pritam: I was stuck in a certain industry loop before Barfi. It opened up my head.
KK and Irrfan Khan were integral to 'Life in a Metro'. Did their absence affect this film?
Basu: Yes. Dil Ka Kya would have surely been sung by him—no one can replace KK.
Pritam: KK had that rare mix—massy, rock, sweet, balladic. Now Arijit can carry that zone, but KK was special.
Basu: Irrfan came to my office terrace once for a smoke and said, 'Make 'Metro 2'. I want to take my character forward." That planted the seed.
You've named Pankaj Tripathi's character Monty—the same name Irrfan had in 'Life in a Metro'.
Basu: When I sent the script to Koko (Konkona Sen Sharma), the character was originally named Debu or something like that. She read it and asked me to call him Monty. It was entirely her suggestion, and a brilliant one.
Tell us about the 'ghazal'-rock blend in 'Metro In Dino'.
Pritam: What we did in the original Metro was pure rock— grungy, guitar-driven. But globally, even bands like Coldplay and Imagine Dragons have shifted to alt-rock, blending in synths and other instruments. That raw rock sound isn't exciting anymore—and even alt-rock has become overused in films. So we asked: what feels fresh now? And the answer was ghazals—reimagined through rock and pop.
Zamaana Lage is an old ghazal sung by many. So is Yaad by Momin Khan Momin. One version of Zamaana was bluesy, one like John Mayer. We picked the pop version for wider reach.
Basu: We had explored a bit of that in Ludo too, but didn't have enough room to go deeper.
Pritam: We tried a ghazal-meets-EDM sound in Ludo, with tracks like Aabaad Barbaad and Hardum Har Pal. We'd label early drafts Ghazal EDM 1, 2, and so on. It's not pure ghazal, more like nazm with electronic textures. Over time, that sound crept into the mainstream. You can hear hints of it in Besharam Rang and Aaj Ki Raat.
You've retained certain musical elements from 'Life in a Metro', like that zitar-like sound in 'Metro In Dino'.
Pritam: That is a zitar, played by Niladri Kumar.
Basu: And there's a little riff in there that's mine.
Pritam: We had to rope Niladri in again—couldn't imagine a Metro sequel without him. I told him, 'You have to do this—it won't be complete without your zitar." He'd just wrapped a show at 10.30pm, came to the studio at 11.30, and played all night. He was such a key part of the first Metro—his leads in In Dino and Rishtey are unforgettable.
Was 'Metro In Dino' always meant to be a quasi-musical?
Basu: Even before Jagga Jasoos, I had started thinking of Metro as a musical. I just couldn't crack the story back then. So that musical instinct ended up in Jagga instead. But the original impulse was always with Metro. When I finally returned to it, I knew I had to keep that semi-musical structure, just dialled it down a bit to avoid indulgence.
In a way, that's a continuation of what you did in 'Life in a Metro', where the band was like a 'sutradhar'.
Basu: Absolutely.
Pritam: I remember him saying — if Metro is evolving, Metro 2 has to upgrade that language. This film is the next step—the band is still there, but now the storytelling itself has become more musical.
What's it like composing for a musical vs a regular film?
Pritam: It's way more exciting. In regular films, you compose to fit a scene. Here, you build an entire soundscape. Even in Barfi, the whole film was designed sonically.
Basu: I have said this before: in this Metro, I have shot scenes between Pritam's songs.
Zico Ghosh is a Kolkata-based journalist.