The lyrics of one of Bollywood’s most famous item numbers, Ek Do Teen, started off as “dummy text”. N Chandra, who directed and produced the super-hit Tezaab in 1988, shared an old Koli folk ditty with the film’s music composers Laxmikant Pyarelal which went, “Ding dong ding”. The legendary duo created a melody with dummy lyrics that went, “Ek Do Teen chaar paanch chhe saat aath nau...”, and lyricist Javid Akhtar took over, to make it a song that spoke about a young woman tired of waiting for her lover. It was Dixit’s first mega hit, and possibly the beginning of the item number trend as we know it. Dixit, as Mohini, danced on stage, choreographed by late Saroj Khan, in a glittery pink, one-shoulder crop top, matching mini skirt. And history was made.

Mumbai-based journalist-turned filmmaker Divya Unny has drawn inspiration from the song 34 years later with her 12-minute short film, Dancing Queen. The film’s protagonist Madhu echoes Unny’s love for the song, which she first heard when she was nine, in 1995. She was a kid growing up in the suburb of Mulund, and attended a convent school where Bollywood music wasn’t encouraged. 

She now sits at her Lokhandwala home with her cat Tara, and husband Somesh Saha, remembering the time. “I was very proper, except on Annual Day when we’d let go. Every Annual Day, I have danced only to Madhuri’s songs, especially Ek Do Teen. It became such a powerful image—I don’t think I had seen a girl expose herself with so much confidence as she did in that picturisation. It created a distinct live audience vibe... you know, how the crowd roars, ‘Mohini, Mohini!’ We replicated that at school. Even the nuns couldn’t eventually help dance.”

It was her mother, Bhamini, who would dress Unny, put on a bit of glitter make-up and gently nudge her on to the stage from the wings. “My mother came to Mumbai when she was 17, and gave up being the Bharatnatyam dancer she was back in Kerala. But she encouraged both of us [daughters] to do what we liked. She wanted this for me, and told me to go fly with my feet. It was like I was carrying her dream forward.”

In 2018, Unny released her first film titled, Her First Time, about a girl’s first menstrual period, and her relationship with her mother. Her latest short also hinges on the mother-daughter bond, and a young girl’s fascination with Dixit and the song.

“When Madhuri was on stage or screen, she was fearless with her body, and expressions. Her dance became a common language of communication among those who loved her. We would imitate her moves, feel like we had achieved something! Ek Do Teen was the beginning of my fan girl time, and the reason I chose it as the focus of this film,” she says.

The track journeys through the film as Madhu transforms from the kid and teen dancing with abandon at home to the TV set, pressured into marriage at 17 and breaking down on her wedding day when the speakers blare the track, to once again finding happiness in it as she and her daughter in turn enjoy it years later. “The song has meant different things to me as I’ve grown older, as it does to Madhu. I had a different idea of romance when I first heard it.” 

Saha, who has produced, edited and composed for films, says that when Unny first discussed the idea with him, he discouraged her because of copyright claim challenges. “The movie is now available on YouTube for free, and can’t be monetised, as T-series holds the copyright to the song, and the price for it would exceed the entire film’s budget,” says Saha, who composed an original score for the movie. “I studied in Shillong, so Bollywood wasn’t big for me, but the song grew on me as I heard it. When Divya broke down the lyrics for me, I sort of saw how she would build her movie around it.”

Aayushi Lahiri, who plays Madhu discusses the crux of the short—girls abandoning their dreams when under societal pressures. “When I danced on the song, I felt like I was the character, I could see Madhu in every girl. It’s such a bright song, it urges to you to dance, fly.”

Madhu lip syncs in a cluttered bedroom to Alka Yagnik’s voice. The playback singer, who has a habit of writing the lyrics down before singing, admits she was initially perplexed. Yagnik tells mid-day, “I thought, this is just counting.”

It was then that composer Laxmikant Kudalkar stepped in, and gave Yagnik a half smile. “He urged me to continue. When I wrote all the lines down, I began to get excited. It was a one-of-a-kind song. Never before was a item song so poetic, and light. Ek Do Teen is part of every film-loving Indian’s life because it’s so catchy. Of course, because it was a dance number, little girls also easily caught on to it.”

Despite a hugely successful career, she admits the song is the biggest landmark in her professional life, and there isn’t a concert that can wrap up without the audience asking for it. “The lyrics that progress from the first day of the month to the end was a brilliant idea by Javed saab, as was the orchestration by Pyarelal ji. Madhuri’s performance added the emotion to every little nuance of the singing. In the end, it was team work,” says Yagnik, who watched Dancing Queen and dropped Unny a line about how much “I loved it”.

The director hopes more women will watch it and feel inspired. “It’s an ode to mothers and daughters, and of course, it’s meant to inspire young girls today, who have so many more platforms than we did to do whatever they want.”