Moments of his life keep cropping up in his work. As a student of computer engineering at Bidar in Karnataka, for example, Sahni witnessed the horrific anti-Sikh riots of 1988. Six students were killed in the attack and the house where Sahni lived with fellow students was the first to be burnt down. “Nobody helped us. Another student and I had to go to Hyderabad to appeal to the CRPF for help.’’ The lesson he learnt—what it is to belong to a minority community and how everyone is a minority somewhere—gave life to the character of coach Kabir Khan in Chak De.

Writing lyrics is Sahni’s stress-buster. Scripts are a more complex business. ‘‘It’s usually the subject that catches my attention. Then come the characters, then a kind of a story idea starts forming, the character’s journey. And from then on it’s the craft stuff—screenplay, dialogues, lyrics, all of it,’’ he says.

Does writing come easy to him? For years now, he says, he has been trying unsuccessfully to get up early to write. ‘‘I keep wasting time, surfing the Net, reading newspapers and usually start getting terribly guilty by around lunchtime. So I have a guilty lunch and guiltily watch TV and then by 3 or so in the afternoon I get going and write for as many hours as it comes naturally and organically.’’

The road ahead holds a lot of promise. Sahni has written the script and lyrics for the Madhuri Dixit comeback film Aaja Nachle, which is ready for a November release. He has penned the lyrics for the Yash Raj-Disney animation film Roadside Romeo that’ll be released next year.

... contd.