Chaiyya Chaiyya

The words go back centuries, to the Sufi poet Bulleh Shah and his folk song "Tere Ishq Nachaya". Singer Sukhwinder Singh suggested it to A.R. Rahman, who was looking for a Punjabi devotional song for Mani Ratnam's 1998 film Dil Se.., and the lyricist Gulzar rewrote it and gave it a new title. Rahman later said the tune had first been composed for his album Vande Mataram, but it did not fit there, so he played it for Ratnam, who loved catchy melodies. On first hearing, by Rahman's account, the director decided it had to be filmed on a train. And so it was, literally on top of one. Shah Rukh Khan, Malaika Arora and a troupe of dancers performed on the roof of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway's steam train in the hills of Tamil Nadu, filmed by Santosh Sivan with choreography by Farah Khan, completed in four and a half days. Arora later insisted there were no camera tricks, no back projection and no post-production effects. Sukhwinder Singh and Sapna Awasthi sang it. The song sold more than six million units in India, and in a 2002 BBC World Service poll of the most popular songs of all time it came ninth. It turned up in Spike Lee's Inside Man, in the musical Bombay Dreams and on CSI: Miami, and in 2010 an Indonesian police officer's dance cover went viral. A centuries-old Sufi verse about being made to dance by love ended up dancing across the world.