Apr 27, 2026 1:26pm IST
Ajay-Atul Pen Three Of Six Lyrics for Hindi Version of ‘Raja Shivaji’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Composer duo Ajay-Atul have scored the songs and background music of the Marathi version of “Raja Shivaji.” Interestingly, they have also written the lyrics for the Marathi as well as Hindi versions. Ajay Gogavale reveals, “Three of the Hindi songs are penned by Manoj Muntashir. The rest, which are the smaller ones, are ours!” Atul chimes in, “In Marathi, we have written all the six songs’ lyrics!” So far, Ajay-Atul, either as co-composers or as a single entity, have scored music for 20 Hindi films so far, but the lyrics have been penned by eminent songwriters like Javed Akhtar, Swanand Kirkire, Irshad Kamil, Kumaar and Amitabh Bhattacharya.
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The duo did pen one Hindi song—the title-track of “Jhund” (2022), whose lexicon was completely “tapori Bambaiyya” (a colloquial Mumbai jargon with liberal Marathi and English influences) as per the demands of that situation. The words went, “Khane ku pine ku / Sabun se dhone ku / Bindaas aaya yeh jhund hai”. But the Hindi songs in a historical like “Raja Shivaji” warrant a purer vocabulary, and clearly the duo, who are not just bi-lingual composers but singers as well, are confident also about their (Hindi) poetic abilities.
Will Ajay-Atul join the ranks of that niche category of composer-lyricists Prem Dhawan, Ravindra Jain and Vishal Dadlani, or whether this will be just moonlighting (due to their immense and self-confessed adulation for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj) remains to be seen. After all, veteran Ravi, Anu Malik, Nadeem (-Shravan), Rajesh Roshan, Bappi Lahiri, Sukhwinder Singh, Himesh Reshammiya, Shantanu Moitra and Sajid-Wajid have all written the occasional song!
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