MUMBAI: After winning several awards as best lyricist for 'Galliyan', Manoj Muntashir, has now taken his writing abilities in another direction. This time, Muntashir has shared the duties of a lyricist and dialogue writer for the upcoming film 'Baahubali'. The music of the film has been composed by the legendary music composer, MM Keeravaani, aka MM Kreem., marking the fourth time that Muntashir and Kreem have teamed up for a project.

“I am very excited to don the hat of a dialogue writer for India’s biggest movie ‘Baahubali’. I took up this project, not just because it is labeled as one of the biggest films of India but also because with this I got an opportunity to recreate the drama and the seriousness that was required for period films,” explained Muntashir. While working on a previous project together in Hyderabad, Kreem asked Muntashir if he would be interested in writing dialogue for a film. Muntashir was later informed that he would be writing dialogues for ‘Baahubali’, and would also be the lyricist for the film’s soundtrack.

Muntashir revealed that he did not find it difficult to write dialogues for the film, as he firmly believes any lyric writer can be a great dialogue writer. “A lyric writer always writes according to the meter of the song and he just given two or two and a half minutes to express his or her feelings. So the language becomes very crisp and tight. Which is why, dialogue writing for a lyricist becomes a cake walk,” he explained.  Some of his favourite dialogue writers include Akhtar Ul Iman, Salim - Javed, Himanshu Sharma and Imtiyaz Ali. “The best thing I liked about Salim Javed was that they never wrote dialogues with heavy words, but emphasised the buildup of a scene. We all remember that one epic dialogue “Mere pass maa hai.” But the buildup was “Mere pass gaadi hai, bangle hai. Tumhare pass kya hai?”. For them dialogue writing was beading pearls to make a beautiful necklace out of it,” he added.

Muntashir labels his first stint with dialogue writing “incredible”. When asked if he will write dialogues for other films in the future, he said, “Now I shall write dialogues for Bhushan Kumar’s films.”

He is currently writing scripts for reality TV shows like 'Indian Idol' and 'India's Got Talent', and prefers taking up limited work.