Malaika Arora: ‘Chaiyya chaiyya’ shouldn’t be recreated

Malaika Arora shot to fame with the song Chaiyya chaiyya back in 1998. She feels that though there is a trend of remixes these days, the AR Rahman composition is one of those numbers that simply shouldn’t be touched.

The song, sung by Sukhwinder Singh and Sapna Awasthi, for the Mani Rathnam film Dil Se is an all-time favourite dance number of most people. Its video featured Malaika and superstar Shah Rukh Khan matching steps atop a train.

Malaika recently danced to the number in an episode of the new dance reality show, India’s Best Dancer. Asked about it, the actress told: ‘When you play that song, you can’t help but get up and dance. It is an iconic song. When I shot the song, Geeta (Kapur) was assisting Farah (Khan) at that time. I used to study under Terence (Lewis), Geeta assisted me on that dance. It was nice. We felt that let’s just go for it.’

But there’s one thing she would like to point out about recreations.

‘In today’s day and age there is a constant trend of remixes. There are a few songs that I think you should never touch. They are iconic. There must be five or 10 songs over the years that you can pull out. ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ is one of them. Don’t tamper with it, just let the original be and that’s how it should be,’ she said.