The song Namak Ishq Ka from the 2006 film Omkara is instrumental in catapulting Rekha Bhardwaj to mainstream fame. The acclaimed singer had been in the industry for years by then and had given several hits, but the success of the song made her a household name. However, Rekha wasn’t sold on the song initially, but her husband and director-composer Vishal Bhardwaj, who had recorded an early rendition by her on his Motorola flip phone, was keen to have the singer on board.
Rekha Bhardwaj on the making of Namak Ishq Ka
In an interview with PTI, Rekha Bhardwaj recalled the making of Namak Ishq Ka, part of the soundtrack of Vishal’s Othello adaptation, Omkara.
“When Namak Ishq Ka happened, I literally earned it because Vishal was preparing and composing songs. He had very little time, so he would come and sing the songs to me when he composed one or two lines, and would say, ‘Is it sounding good? Should I elaborate on this?’ Till Namak Ishq Ka happened, I sang mostly emotional, melancholic, soulful songs only because I used to feel that this is what I’m capable of,” the singer said.
Rekha recalled how Vishal would often make her sing the songs he had composed for the film, as it would give him some perspective. “So, for this song, he asked me to sing, and I just sang, and naturally, the high notes got added. The high was not composed at that time, but I just sang it, and he said, ‘Wow.’ He recorded it on his Motorola flip phone and said, ‘Let me record this. You will forget it, and I will also forget it,” she added.
However, Rekha was not comfortable singing a raunchy number. “Later, I said, ‘I can’t sing this song. It’s a very difficult song.’ If you look at the graph, it keeps changing and changing. Also, it was a bit of a challenge for me to sing that kind of raunchy song,” she said. But eventually, Vishal convinced her, and the song became a chartbuster.
About Namak Ishq Ka and Omkara
Picturised on Bipasha Basu, the song was one of the two dance numbers in Omkara, alongside Beedi, another chartbuster. Omkara, which completes 20 years in July, starred Ajay Devgn, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Vivek Oberoi, Bipasha Basu, Konkona Sen Sharma, Naseeruddin Shah, and Deepak Dobriyal in key roles.
The 2006 crime drama is regarded as one of Hindi cinema’s finest literary adaptations. It was the second film in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Shakespearean trilogy, following the 2003 film Maqbool, inspired by Macbeth, and preceding the 2014 film Haider, an adaptation of Hamlet.
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