If you have ever met director Imtiaz Ali, you will know that he is very involved in the music-making process of his movies. This writer and him have had long conversations about why the AR Rahman melody Kun Faya Kun was so integral to his movie Rockstar. For his next movie, Laila Majnu, which released this Friday, and for which he has written the screenplay, Ali had musical inputs to give sitar player and composer Niladri Kumar.

"I am not the type to make 30 melodies for a movie. I made one and sent it across to Ali, and he instantly liked it. He is very intuitive and has a keen ear," says Kumar, a fifth-generation sitar player who has produced more than 15 albums in a career spanning two decades. Along with being the creator of the Zitar, an electric sitar, you have to have heard his riff lines in songs like Crazy Kiya Re and Bheegi Bheegi. And, even though he has worked with music directors like Rahman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Pritam, it's in Laila Majnu, that Kumar has set out to compose in form of a music director.