Thanda thanda paani: The unforgettable track that marked India's hip-hop era

Baba Sehgal

In was in 1992 that, in a one-bedroom on the first floor of the Jolly Maker Tower 1 in Cuffe Parade, Charles Vaz, Baba Sehgal and Atul Churamani tried to record Thanda Thanda Paani, a song that went on to have one of the highest recall value for any 90s kid. Vaz's bedroom doubled up as a studio, with a thick curtain being the only physical evidence to earmark it as one. At the time, Vaz, was a hotshot music arranger, after working with singer Alisha Chinai, and Baba, a relatively unknown artist. But they did what they did, and the rest is history.

Hip hop completed 50 years this month, from its birth way back in 1973 in the Bronx, when Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc, improvised and played snippets in a ¬loop on two turntables to keep the music and dancing going. And it took us back to Thanda Thanda Paani, a song that started it all in India, and sold 100,000 copies in three-and-half-months, an undefeated record to this day.

Charles Vaz and Atul Churamani

Vaz, who had arranged what Sehgal had composed in a night, shushed his father and his friends to stop talking while Sehgal belted out the famous lyrics at his home. "My father and his friends enjoyed the song too. We never knew that eventually the whole country would groove to the songs on the album," says Vaz, who still resides in the same apartment.

Sehgal has moved to Dubai and branched out into different genres of music, even singing songs for South movies, particularly Telugu. "That album changed everything. No one had heard anyone rapping in Hindi before," he tells us over the phone. The album was released in August of 1992 and had not taken off much until MTV released a video of Dil Dhadke (Koi to batade ye kyu dhadke), starring Pooja Bedi, was released in September. "I am a trained engineer and at the time, it was my last chance to show my father, who had loaned me his Maruti 800 to drive down from Lucknow, then Delhi and finally Bombay, that what I was doing wasn't a complete waste of time."

Sehgal confirms that the sales of the record remain undefeated, "Yes, in the hip-hop genre, it is still the highest selling record in such a short time (three-and-a-half-months)."

Another important player in the success of the album was Atul Churamani, who had just moved to Mumbai and headed the offices of Magnasound, the record label that wanted break the hegemony of Bollywood film music over the Indian music scene. "Magnasound at the time was a licensee for Warner Music, and the Magnasound owner, Shashi Gopal, had given us the clear directive that the company didn't want to do Bollywood music. We wanted to feature artists that had an identity of their own." Recalling when he first the title track of the album, Churamnai says, "I think it was 1992 and it was Charles's birthday, when another artist called Mubina, sang the original song Ice Ice Baby (the song that inspired Thanda Thanda Paani). After she was done, Baba said I'll just do something and he went ahead and rapped his cover while on the keyboard. I told him to come to the studio to record in the day, even though we were already into the wee hours of the morning."

Sehgal's launch, and the entry of Magnasound, ushered in a new era of Indian pop music, says Narendra Kusnur, a music journalist who covered the music industry at the time. "With Baba, they wanted to look at someone with mass appeal, and the North of India could identify with his music. He was the lone hip hop artist of the time, and it didn't really sustain as a movement beyond Sehgal, as they just couldn't find anyone who could replicate the same success." The jury's still out on that one.