It's been 17 years since Shah Rukh Khan danced on top of a moving train in Dil Se.. and Chaiyya Chaiyya still gives one a high. The song's choreographer, Farah Khan, reveals that the reason they did that was because they didn't get permission to shoot at the Ooty railway station.

The authorities decided, at the nth hour, that they couldn't block the yard for a film shoot for five days and director Mani Ratnam called Farah to enquire if they could shoot on top of the train. "Without thinking I told him it was a fab idea, little realising what I was getting into," she admits.

Fortunately for Farah, a strike in Chennai meant unexpected breathing space for composer AR Rahman who was at his peak then. He finished this song for Dil Se.. and sent it across so Farah could rehearse her moves.

The feisty dance director had already told her 'hero', Shah Rukh Khan, that there would be no compromises because of the location. He would have to jump, prance, go down on his knees, do everything that would be expected of him at ground level. "Shah Rukh was game, promising that he'd kill it for any other actor. He was enthusiastic and super energetic, refusing to wear a safety harness and even threatening to dance on top of the engine room till I pointed out that the gushing steam would burn him. As it is, at the end of each day, we'd be covered in soot, with pieces of coal clogging our noses, ears and stuck to our hair," Farah reminisces.

The only problem was that SRK didn't have a dancing partner. Shilpa Shirodkar had said no, so also Shilpa Shetty who was scared of heights. Even a South Indian heroine whom Mani had approached had refused him. It was make-up wizard, Mickey Contractor, who suggested Malaika Arora's name to Farah when they were shooting for Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

"I knew Malaika who was dating Arbaaz Khan. We'd hang out together but I didn't know she could dance. Mickey assured me that she could and three days before the shoot, she flew down to Ooty and we rehearsed in the banquet hall of Mithun's (Chakraborty) hotel, Monarch. But there was no time to practise on top of the train. On the first day it was hit-and-miss but by the second day, we were quite comfortable on the roof, drinking tea, eating breakfast, doing everything other than relieving ourselves," laughs Farah.

They wrapped up the song in four-and-a-half-days, travelling to and fro Ooty to Coonoor, from 7 am to 6 pm. The train would stop at Ooty station for five minutes during which they had to load everything and everyone. Later, it would stop again for the ritual of passing the keys. That apart, they were in motion through the day.

"If the train slowed, it got really jerky up on the roof. It had to run at a speed of 40 km per hour for it to be stable. It was a dangerous ride, with sheer drops on each side. When I'm asked what precautions I took, I say that I took extra dancers along in case some fell off. Fortunately, no one did," she says with a relieved chuckle, happily sharing her success with Rahman and Gulzar who gave her a fabulous song even though they had to constantly call up Javed Akhtar to ask what certain words meant.

Farah admits that when they were shooting it, she knew Chaiyya Chaiyya was something special and was disappointed when the film flopped. But despite the box-office failure, it went on to become a cult song and became Farah's calling card. She relived the experience years later by getting a train on stage for the Bombay Dreams cast to do a Chaiyya Chaiyya.

"A Swedish film, Dancer In The Dark, shot on top of a train too but with 72 cameras placed en route. We had a camera set on a crane on the roof and took 360 degrees shots with steady cams which had my assistant and me diving under a blanket as there was nowhere else to hide," she flashbacks.

For its novelty and the challenges it presented, Chaiyya Chaiyya tops Farah's list, more so when she learnt that after the film's release, some viewers would stray into the auditorium just before the song came on, dance to its beats, then walk out. "In the interiors, I'm told, that some theatre owners attached it to the end of the film so instead of a depressing human bomb explosion the film had a happy ending," she signs off.