Farah Khan Recalls Javed Akhtar's Reaction To Dard-E-Disco: 'Gulzar Saab Jaisa Likhna hai? Abhi Likhta Hu’

It’s been 17 years since Om Shanti Om hit cinemas, but Shah Rukh Khan’s shimmering abs and the beats of Dard-E-Disco still refuse to fade from pop culture. Now, director Farah Khan has shared the hilarious

backstory behind the song’s making — including how Javed Akhtar wrote its famously absurd lyrics in just five minutes after she gave him a cheeky brief: “Write like Gulzar sahab.” The track, featuring Shah Rukh Khan flaunting his six-pack for the first time, remains one of Hindi cinema’s most unforgettable mashups — part qawwali, part disco, part pure chaos.

Speaking on the Take 2 podcast, Farah Khan revealed that lyricist Javed Akhtar didn’t take long to pen down the words once she gave him her unusual direction. “When we were doing ‘Dard-E-Disco,’ my only brief to him was: ‘Just write like Gulzar sahab.’ And within five minutes, he’d written ‘Dard-E-Disco’. Javed uncle said, ‘Achha, Gulzar sahab jaisa likhna hai? Abhi likhta hu.’ If you listen to ‘Dard-E-Disco,’ it’s all written like Gulzar sahab,” she said, laughing.

The director also joked about how long Javed Akhtar usually takes to finish his songs. “We’d wait for days for him to write two lines and give it to us. Javed uncle can procrastinate. He can chat about anything but do his homework,” Farah quipped.

Interestingly, Javed Akhtar himself once recalled on Cyrus Says how Farah wanted a song that “had no meaning because the situation was absurd.” He admitted, “I realised for the first time that to write gibberish is very difficult. I’m happy that it was fairly meaningless.”

In the film, “Dard-E-Disco” appears in a sequence where superstar Om Kapoor (Shah Rukh Khan) insists on adding a dream song to his film even though his character is wheelchair-bound — a deliberate parody of over-the-top Bollywood logic.

Farah also remembered another lyrical moment of confusion from Dil Se.., where she had to call Javed Akhtar to decode Gulzar’s poetic Urdu in “Satrangi Re.” “We couldn’t understand what’s written, so I used to call up Javed uncle and say, ‘Ye kya likha hai, mujhe explain karo.’”