Dawn Images

Pakistani Twitter is enraged, but this time it’s for all the right reasons. Ali Sethi and Shae Gill’s smash hit ‘Pasoori’ has been remade for a Bollywood movie — which is reason enough for Twitter to be utterly furious.

The song has been recreated and released for upcoming Bollywood movie Satyaprem Ki Katha starring Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani. The movie is set to release on June 28 but the teaser for the movie was shared three weeks and the song on Monday, which obviously had Pakistanis raging.

‘Pasoori Nu’ has been sung by Arijit Singh and, despite Bollywood’s attempts to renew the song by altering its lyrics, we believe it’s been made in the hopes of capitalising on ‘Pasoori’s’ fame.

There has been widespread speculation about the legal sourcing of the song. Sethi owns the rights to it, not Coke Studio, but he hasn’t commented one way or the other and has not responded to Images’ request for a comment

Actor Adnan Siddiqui posted about the song when it was just a rumour — unfortunately all the rumours were true.

Netizens took to Twitter to express their disappointment in Bollywood’s inability to produce original songs.

Discourse about the misplaced use of a Punjabi melody in the largely Gujrati setting of the film, and the strange use of a lament as a romantic song made rounds on Twitter. Pakistanis were quick to notice how the promotional video lauds the song as a “global hit” instead of a Pakistani production and many attempted to bring the original song to the forefront of the discussion through snippets of the Coke Studio version.

And of course, Twitter isn’t Twitter without its remarkable sense of meme humour, taking a jab at all the comments putting Arijit Singh’s version at par with Sethi’s original masterpiece.

People felt particularly possessive about the song and questioned Coke Studio and Sethi about its ‘protection’ in the global music industry. This isn’t, of course, the first time this has happened. Sometimes, Bollywood licenses the songs and sometimes it blatantly rips them off. Such was the case with Abrar-ul-Haq’s ‘Nach Punjaban’, Nazia Hassan’s ‘Disco Deewane’ and countless others.

With Bollywood being studded by immensely talented musicians and songwriters, we are left wondering why it feels the need to rewrite and recreate Pakistani hits, especially ones that so recently dominated music charts.