Saroj Khan's choreography scrapped; Vishal Bharadwaj takes charge of Oye Boy Oye Boy Charlie song in Matru Ki Bijli Ka Mandola

In her long and illustrious career this must be the first occasion when choreographer Saroj Khan’s work has been scrapped. But the need of the hour was a change of choreography. It is with some amount of shock and disbelief that we hear of the legendary Saroj Khan being relieved of her choreographic duties, and that too after she had completed her work for Vishal Bharadwaj’s Matru Ki Bijli Ka Mandola. The song in question is the catchy Oye Boy Oye Boy Charlie featuring Imran Khan, Anushka Sharma, Pankaj Kapoor, Aarya Babbar and a host of actors and junior artistes. After Saroj Khan completed choreographing the number Vishal scrapped her choreography and completely re-did the entire song. To dig out the actual facts pertaining to this startling ouster of Bollywood’s most venerated choreographer one had get to a hang of Vishal’s requirements for the number . Says a source close to the project, “Vishal has the greatest regard for Saroj Khanji. Who doesn’t? To have her choreograph the Charlie song was a dream come true for Vishal. And to her credit she did a brilliant job of it. But finally what Sarojji did with the song was not what Vishal wanted. The director had envisaged an air of unrehearsed spontaneity in the movements. The characters in the Charlie song shouldn’t look like they knew their dance steps from before. To get that spirit of on-the-spot improvisation into the choreography Vishal had to reluctantly re-do the entire choreography of the song.” Apparently Imran and Anushka, both extremely busy actors, readily accommodated a second round of choreography for the song, though we hear there was a certain amount of all-round trepidation and misgiving about doing away with the veteran choreographer’s efforts. Says the source, “Vishal, Imran and Anushka felt sorry about dancing to the Charlie song again, more so since Sarojji’s choreography was as usual, brilliant. But they all felt it wasn’t what was required.” When contacted all Vishal revealed was that he did indeed do the choreography of the Oye Boy Charlie number. “Something inside me told me I should,” said Vishal.