MUMBAI: While mainstream Bollywood movies are all over the place, there are certain off-beat movies being made somewhere in between the commercial hullabaloo. One such movie that is all set to release is ‘Anaarkali of Aarah.’

The movie is based on a performer from the town of Aarah in Bihar who sings songs that have some sort of an underlying pun to it. The film revolves around the tumultuous journey of Anaarkali as a naachparty singer and as a woman in an unruly and volatile patriarchal society.

Rohit Sharma, the music director of the film, is also the founding member of the progressive band ‘Swaang’. The band is a group of actors, writers, directors and academics all involved in the film industry in various ways with Swaang.

“The movie is all about songs with double meanings. We wanted to give out strong political messages through the music and also bring about certain realities that some women have to face on a daily basis,” said Rohit.

“There is a song called ‘Dullaliah Mein Jung’ which talks about the corruption that is deep rooted in the police department while the other meaning is pretty obvious,” added the music director.

Sonu Nigam has also lent his voice for one of the songs in the movie. It’s called ‘Man Bekaid Hua’. “Sonu Nigam has just been a boon for us. He underwent a surgery yet he made it to the studios to record the song. He just took the song to a new level,” said the music composer.

There is also a semi-classical number sung by the evergreen Rekha Bharadwaj which is called ‘Thumri.’ “In the movie, Anaarkali’s mother can be seen singing the song. With this, we wanted to show that even these so-called naachparty singers are trained in rich classical music so it’s not always right to judge somebody’s art. You never know their compulsions,” said Rohit.

There are a total of five lyricists in the movie and they are, Prashant Ingole, Ram Kumar Singh, Ravinder Randhawa, Avinash Das and last but not the least Dr. Sagar who penned ‘Mora Piya Matlab Ka Yaar’.

The singers include the likes of as mentioned earlier, Sonu Nigam, Rekha Bharadwaj, Swati Sharma, Pavni Pandey and Indu Sonali.

In a nutshell, the movie looks and sounds awesome and there’s no way we are missing this. ‘Anaarkail of Aarah’ is all set to release on 24 March 2017. Block your dates peeps!