Gaya Prasad Prajapati, who penned the lyrics for
Mehengaai daayan
sung by Aamir Khan for his production,
Peepli [Live]
, was reportedly unhappy with a meager work fee of Rs 1100 that his troupe and he were paid after delivering the track.
Prajapati, a teacher from Badwai village near Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, where director Anusha Rizvi shot the film, feels the amount doesn’t justify his effort. “I had raised my voice against it. We wanted to be paid Rs 11 lakh,” he said, adding that he and the other ten members of his troupe would then divide the fee between themselves.
Given the popularity of the song, Khan decided to give Prajapati and his troupe their due by inviting them to Mumbai for the music launch on Tuesday evening. It seems the dispute over payment had been settled in the interim.
Khan clarified, “The production team thought that the line producer was handling it and the Badwai Village Mandali thought that the production would pay them. The production was told that someone was looking into it and before the issue could be sorted, the media got whiff of it. However, everything has been amicably resolved.”
Khan clarified, “The production team thought that the line producer was handling it and the Badwai Village Mandali thought that the production would pay them. The production was told that someone was looking into it and before the issue could be sorted, the media got whiff of it. However, everything has been amicably resolved.”
Prajapati admits that there was misunderstanding over payments. “We’re very happy with what we’ve got,” he says, stating that they were eventually paid Rs 6 lakh.
When asked why had he settled for the amount that was Rs 5 lakh less than what he demanded, Prajapati says, “The love and respect we’ve got in Mumbai is far more than what we expected. We’re extremely pleased with the recognition that Aamirji has got for our work and that’s also what matters a lot to us.”