Ace director Mani Ratnam, who is now making a bilingual in Hindi with Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai and Govinda and in Tamil with Vikram, Priyamani and Pritviraj, has his ‘discovery’ AR Rahman providing music for both the films.

Mani’s biggest strength as a commercial filmmaker is the packaging of songs and the way it is picturised. He is one of the very few mainstream Indian directors who has never gone out of the country to shoot his songs.

There is a lot of ‘Indianess’ about the songs in Mani’s films and the secret has been that he sits with his lyric writers and music director to get the feel of the theme he is tackling.

For this bilingual there are seven songs penned down by Gulzar in Hindi and Vairamuthu in Tamil.

At the end Mani had a tight rope walk as he had to agree to Gulzar’s viewpoint that good Urdu poetry towers above everything else, and Vairamuthu’s assertion that Tamil is a sweeter and better language to pen poetry!