Mani Ratnam's Roja starring Aravind Swami and Madhu Bala turned out to be a cult classic. The songs tuned by Rahman turned out to be chartbusters.
In the midst of all this, Baba Sehgal speaking to scribes came up with a shocker about the film's Rukmani Rukmani song. He said “I had a show in Chennai. Somebody from the organising team told me that some director wants to meet me," He added “There was an assistant director who came and played Rukmani Rukmani’s Tamil version. I didn’t pay much attention to it and just said ‘yes’ to the song. AR Rahman was also there. He was very young at the time."
He said, “I called my friend Atul and gave them Shashi Gopal’s number from Magnus Sound. They connected and eventually decided to do a Hindi version, on one condition that one song would be sung by me. I understood then that AR Rahman and Mani Ratnam didn’t really like me."
Baba Sehgal continued “When I saw the Hindi lyrics, I was like, ‘Kitne vahiyat lyrics hai yaar. Kisne likha hai ye?’ (How cheap are these lyrics? Who wrote this?). The problem is, when we listen to songs in another language, they sound fine. But in our own language, we grasp the meaning. I don’t think Rahman or Ratnam knew what those Hindi lyrics meant."
He added “It was a forced thing. I was not at all convinced with the lyrics. They were very cheap, I feel," and continued “Another lady was called to sing the female lines. Later, I told Swetha Shetty to sing those too, and she nailed it. That was my first and last song with Rahman. Language was a problem. We never met after that."