How do you separate Mowgli and the stories of Jungle Book that we grew up watching every Sunday with the joyous track “Jungle jungle pata chalaa hai..”?
You don’t! And that’s what Disney India is doing next. Bringing this memory back! In a very special collaboration with Vishal Bhardwaj and Gulzar, the studio is releasing a reversion of the original track composed by the duo 23 years ago!
“Jungle jungle baat chali hai pata chala hai…’ was not only my first successful song but, more importantly, it was my first collaboration with Gulzar saab. We were under a huge time constraint when we first made the song and didn’t even have a moment to process what we were doing. We could never have imagined how popular it would be! After 23 years it’s been an absolute delight to revisit the song. Gulzaar saabs lyrics are as stunning as ever. He is truly at his best when he writes for kids. One could say that Gulzar Saab is, in fact, the oldest kid in the film industry! He is not jaded by age and so his lyrics rejoice in the innocence of childhood and pure wonder for the world! What greater joy is there for a composer than to have such a masterful lyricist to work with?” says Vishal Bhardwaj.
“Jungle Jungle… is the childhood anthem of everyone in the 90’s generation. For them, they have grown up on this song, it’s a song that every Indian knows, loves and remembers, so we thought it would be great to revive it for our upcoming release The Jungle Book. We also feel that it was time that this legendary song was revitalized for the new generation to carry it forward as fondly as most of us have. We are very glad to have got both Gulzar ji and Vishal ji agree to recreate this for many existing and innumerable new fans in India,” says Amrita Pandey, Vice President-Studios, Disney India.
To make the film unique and special for India, the Studio has already roped in stellar voice talent – Priyanka Chopra, Irrfan, Nana Patekar, Shefali Shah and Om Puri – to lend their voice for the principal characters of the movie. In the Hollywood version, Scarlett Johannson, Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o and Ben Kingsley have dubbed for the respective characters.
Disney’s The Jungle Book is one of the most-anticipated films of recent times and the Indian audience will get to watch it on April 8, a week before US release.
