Vipin Patwa: Parineeti Chopra's version more narrative

Parineeti Chopra

When director Ribhu Dasgupta set the scene for Vipin Patwa to compose a track for The Girl on the Train, he punched above his weight to create a visual narrative for him to feed on. "[By the end of our discussion] I could visualise our protagonist who is upset. She roams the streets of London, drunk and broken, and faints often due to the trauma that she is enduring.

We needed a track that could do justice to the tragedy that she was going through," says Patwa, who approached Neha Kakkar with an appeal to render the song, without a fee. Patwa was tasked with the job of creating Matlabi yaariyan when the film hadn't been acquired by a prominent production house, and was being made on a slim budget.

"We didn't have funds, but Neha agreed to sing it because she liked the track. The track was about deception, but we wanted to depict it differently. Most of the people who forge a relationship with others do so with a certain purpose. It is only our friends who create a relationship without the desire to reap benefits. We wanted the song to depict that."

Dual versions of the same track are often distinctly treated by composers, who may employ a female voice for a track initially rendered by a male, or create an acoustic version of a dance number. "We knew that we could leverage Parineeti's [singing] skills, given that she was also the protagonist in the film. So, we made a version specifically for her. Neha's version is an upbeat number; it has a certain groove and an aggression that a professional singer like her could pull off. Parineeti's version is more narrative than [melodious] because she doesn't sing too often."