In the days after we saw “Dil Se,” my family joked that hey, it wasn’t all bad, at least Rahman did the music. Indeed, the composer’s work on other films saved them from being relegated to dustbins. The only reason we never walked out on, say, “Taal” and “Sapnay” is because of Rahman’s score. “Dil Se,” however, is the rare, already brilliant movie that achieves transcendence because of Rahman. Song by song, note by note, he explores the exuberance and despondence of passion. “Satrangi Re”—which translates roughly to “Seven-Hued Beloved”—courses with madness, a didgeridoo, and Sonu Nigam’s desperate pleading vocals, all deepening Amar’s obsession. Farah Khan’s intense experimental choreography, an unusual mode for her work even now, adds to the song’s pervasive haunting. It took me 23 years to notice that Koirala, during the song, cycles through seven differently colored costumes. Rahman also employs operatic vocals—sung in both Hindi and Tamil by the one and only Sukhwinder Singh—that ring out like cosmic pleas careening through the vast emptiness of heartbreak, perfect for the sequences set in the Leh Region of India. Amar and Meghna’s conversations are scored by plucky strings and a dark bass line, pulsating with ominous depth, underscoring that even their simplest encounters are tainted by danger.
Throughout, the soaring vocals suggest a despair that is both beautiful and fatal. “Ae Ajnabi”—translates to “Oh Stranger”—is a spare ballad of longing that is the closest thing to Meghna’s opinion on her predicament. She does not sing the song, merely hears it on the radio, as Amar plays it after creating a short radio play about their meeting. “I live broken and in pieces,” sings Udit Narayan in yet another career-best performance, “and you, somewhere, are in pieces too.” Koirala embodies the song perfectly: she stumbles gently, clearly moved, distraught, toward the radio, turns it off, turns it back on, and turns it off again. The title song is a glorious anthem, sung by Rahman himself, and nearly perfect in execution: an instantly catchy, up-tempo rock song through which Amar and Meghna live out a fantasy of love in the face of, in the midst of, in spite of, war. The song’s stubborn refusal to give up the joys of life is truly angelic: the thumping beats back children, as they race down streets obliterated by bombs and cordoned with barbed wire, determined to dance. Still, there is a hint of Amar’s actual futile pursuit of Meghna, who continually slips just out of his grasp throughout the song.
At the end of “Dil Se” Meghna runs into Amar’s arms, happy and free, a dire inversion of their future. In truth, Amar and Meghna’s story is neither free nor happy, and Rahman manages both narratives with verve. So extraordinary is Rahman’s work here that even the background score is inextricably linked to the film’s feel. The title credits, which do not have visuals of any kind, feature a folk melody sung by a chorus of children, the peaceful trickle of a creek, cut through with the crash of thunder, bullets, helicopters, tortured screams, and explosions. Tribal drums begin to beat, increasing in speed, indicative of the chase we are about to witness. It’s a kaleidoscopic introduction to life in separatist Indian states, where the beauty of indigenous traditions have been permanently damaged, but not destroyed, by state violence. When I listen to this introductory composition, over 20 years after first hearing it in a New Delhi theater, I am in awe of its visionary scope and deeply felt genius.
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