Gulzar, Debajyoti Mishra and Rashid Khan in the city on Tuesday; (below) director Ramesh Sharma. Pictures by Aranya Sen

Tere aankhon ka rang hai maati ka? the moving words penned by Gulzar in memory of a ?simple man? came alive as Rashid Khan lent them his voice at a quiet Southern Avenue studio on Tuesday afternoon.

The occasion was the soundtrack recording for a documentary film on former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, for which Gulzar spent the day with Rashid Khan, music composer Debajyoti Mishra and director Ramesh Sharma at the south Calcutta address.

The project has been commissioned by the cultural ministry as part of the Lal Bahadur centenary celebrations.

?I wanted poetic words that could convey the greatness of Lal Bahadur Shastri and who better than Gulzar? I loved Debajyoti?s music in Raincoat; he has retained the mood of celebration and pathos. Rashid Khan has brought out the emotional but also the strong semi-classical undertones in the title track,? said Sharma, who had made the Shashi Kapoor-Sharmila Tagore-starrer New Delhi Times back in the 1980s.

In Calcutta after a long time, Sharma seemed a little wistful about the place from where had begun his career, ?in 1979, with a documentary on Rumtek; Subrata Mitra was my cinematographer?.

The docu-feature on Lal Bahadur will consist of three tracks by Rashid Khan and two by Shubha Mudgal. ?My brief from Ramesh was the kind of music that would capture a man who was close to the soil, someone who was soft on the outside but inwardly strong. So my music had to be evocative but not sentimental,? said Debajyoti, who worked with Gulzar in Mrinal Sen?s Amaar Bhuvan, apart from Raincoat.

For the docu-drama, to be shot in Varanasi, Allahabad, Delhi and Mumbai, Sharma is recreating Lal Bahadur?s life through drama, as ?very little information is available on his childhood?.

The 100-minute-long film will be aired on Doordarshan in five parts. ?I want Gulzar to anchor the docu-feature and I think he has agreed,? laughed the film-maker whose last documentary work was The Jihadi and the Journalist, co-produced with HBO, last year.

A trifle weary of the close encounters with reality, Sharma now wants to change tracks. ?It was terrorists last year and before that I made a documentary on the Taliban. Now I want to film an intense love story.? And so he has chosen the intriguing world of artist Amrita Sher Gil. ?I have always been fascinated by Amrita Sher Gil,? admitted Sharma, who is busy penning the script.

The feature film will have many European actors and will be shot in places that Sher Gil called home at some point in her life ? Budapest, London and Shimla.