What Is It About 'Duniya Haseeno Ka Mela' That Still Gets Us?
Why Bobby Deol’s Gupt chartbuster has still got it
AMONG ALL THE CULTURAL ARTEFACTS THE BA***DS of Bollywood has given us to talk about, it’s Duniya Haseeno Ka Mela (The World’s a Fairground of Beauties)—the song from Gupt: The Hidden Truth (1997)—that evokes the most fondness. “Ek jaam dhoondhta hun main, maikashi ke liye” (“I’m looking for the right libation for intoxication”), the lyrics go. The song crossed eight million views on YouTube within a week of the show’s release.
But numbers only confirm what fans have always known: it’s a banger. A musical stand-in for the thrill and seduction of Gupt itself, Rajiv Rai’s slick love triangle whodunit. Even today, the song’s flute intro enjoys approval from those with an appreciation for good Bollywood music. I earlier spoke of fondness, but back then, it was a playful darkness that the song came to stand for. A devilishly charming anthem where Udit Narayan’s sweet vocals gain a worldly-wise swagger thanks to Anand Bakshi’s lyrics (“Ada, nasha, nazar, badan, sab kuchh tere paas hai/Magar tu woh ghata nahin, jiski mujhe pyaas hai”, translating to “You’ve got style, seduction, face and form, yet you aren’t the cloud I thirst for”).
The recall value of the song owes a lot to Deol’s rizz. Long after Gupt, about the time the horror and shock of the pandemic was quickly becoming the new normal, a new meme began circulating: clips from movies starring Bobby Deol resurfaced as a funny showreel of him administering COVID-19 protocols. He even seemed to give an RT-PCR test to Aishwarya Rai, in a scene repurposed from the Rahul Rawail film Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya!
That brainrot moment was just the beginning of the lore around Lord Bobby. Reels were just coming. In his mock resurgence in pop culture, Deol became a symbol of coolth from an age of great uncertainties. Rocking a black vest and wayfarers, he emerged on the horizon, his wavy black hair swaying to the beats of “Soldier, Soldier”.
No moment captures it quite as Duniya Haseeno... The leaps, shuffles and exaggerated theatrics that put a clubby, urban and louche spin on Sanjay Dutt’s ’90s bad boy act. In the song’s YouTube thumbnail, Deol, then 27, leans on the bar counter asking for a drink. The golden buttons on his cuff coordinate with his shiny reflectors and the foil on the champagne bottles in the foreground. In the dance sequence, he struts, cavorts and head-bangs in round glasses and a sequinned jacket layered over a leather waistcoat.
And all that makes it the “right libation” we need for intoxication, three decades on. Ek dost dhoondhta hoon main, dosti ke liye...
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