In a new conversation at Shreya Ghoshal’s Mumbai home, Farah Khan returned to a decision that now looks obvious but was, in 2004, treated as a risk.
Ghoshal was 18. Her playback debut in Devdas was still unreleased when Main Hoon Na went into production. Farah Khan and composer Anu Malik chose her anyway. The timing matters: Ghoshal’s first National Award came for Devdas, but at the recording stage that validation did not yet exist publicly.
A newcomer before the world knew
Farah recalls that the choice drew calls from industry insiders. The question was blunt: why hand songs in a Shah Rukh Khan-starrer to a new girl? Farah’s answer was that she wanted “a fresh voice.”
Ghoshal remembers watching Sushmita Sen on screen and wondering whether she had done justice to the songs. The self-doubt is part of the story, but so is the order of events.
The small track that became the proof
Farah says Shreya first sang the Main Hoon Na title track’s portion for Amrita Rao. That brief performance changed the pitch. On its strength, she was given Tumhe Jo Maine Dekha, the Sushmita Sen track.
What Farah and Anu Malik did, in effect, was test a newcomer on a contained assignment before expanding the responsibility:
- Heard Shreya on the smaller title-track portion
- Used that as the basis for the Sushmita Sen song
- Overruled warnings against casting an unknown voice
Both songs were composed by Anu Malik with lyrics by Javed Akhtar. Main Hoon Na became a commercial success and remains a reference point for 2000s Hindi cinema.
Why the gamble still matters
Main Hoon Na was Farah’s directorial debut, which made the music choices doubly consequential: she was establishing her own voice as a director while also choosing a singer’s. The safer move would have been an established playback name. Farah’s bet was that novelty was a feature, not a defect.
That bet gave Ghoshal an early platform. In the two decades since, she has become one of the most dependable and versatile voices in Hindi film playback. The industry warnings Farah ignored look, in hindsight, like a consensus that was about to be overtaken.
Source: Hindustan Times
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