The legendary composer AR Rahman has reacted to his anthemic song “Maa Tujhe Salaam” being played prominently at Team India’s victory parade in Mumbai on Thursday, in celebration of India’s historic victory at the recently held T20 Cricket World Cup. The song features verses from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s poem Vande Mataram, which played a vital role during India’s independence movement. A composition set to Raag Desh was later adopted as the ‘national song’ by the Congress party after Independence. Rahman’s version was released in 1997, to mark 50 years of India’s freedom.
Taking to Instagram on Friday, he shared a video of the players taking a victory lap at the Wankhede Stadium, singing the anthem along with a packed crowd of thousands. “Really emotional to see an anthem created 27 years ago continues to 🔥🔥the nation,” read the caption of the post, which Rahman shared alongside ad filmmaker G Bharat Bala. The video shows cricketers Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, and others walking along the boundary line of the stadium, singing at the top of their lungs, and waving the World Cup trophy around. Virat Kohli appears to conduct the crowd into a crescendo.
Also read – Shah Rukh Khan, Vicky Kaushal, Ayushmann Khurrana, Ananya Panday express joy as Team India returns to Mumbai: ‘Boys in Blue take away all the blues’
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In a 1997 India Today interview, Rahman recalled singing the song for the first time, in the presence of Bala. “In late January, on the 27th day of Ramzan, an auspicious time when legend has it that angels open the gates of heaven and all prayers are answered, I descended on my studio. It was 2 AM and my sound engineer had disappeared. And so I called Bala (Bharat Bala) and when he arrived I told him you’re the sound engineer. And then I sang for the first time, a few verses for just the two of us… He laughed, then he cried,” Rahman said.
Several Bollywood personalities celebrated India’s victory during the victory parade. Shah Rukh Khan, Ayushmann Khurrana and Vicky Kaushal were among the many film stars who shared the same Vande Mataram video, or wrote congratulatory notes for the players.
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