Pritam and Anurag, brothers in songs

As Hindi cinema retreats from music, director Anurag Basu and composer Pritam continue to build films around it

- Zico Ghosh

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 room 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.