Sonu Nigam’s Soja Sapno Mein Khoja - A Song Wrapped in a Mother’s Love
- Hansa
- Jun 2
- 3 min read
Year of release: 1999
Album: Sanskar
Lyricist: Sonu Nigam
Composer: Ravi Pawar
Some songs comfort you. Some songs haunt you. And then there are songs like 'Soja Sapno Mein Khoja' that feel less like a composition and more like a prayer whispered in the dark.
Written straight from the heart, this song, more than perhaps any other song of Sonu's, shows the close bond he shares with his mother. It's almost as though his mother has written this song, through him. There is something deeply comforting about the way it speaks to the listener – not like a grand spiritual composition, but like a mother quietly soothing her child to sleep.
When I hear the words – Soja, sapno mein darshan degi Ma, I remember his interviews where he says he meets his mother every night, on the other side.
And then these lines hit me hard –
Kisi raah par mai agar
Nahi rahoon mere laal...
Yeh na samjhna mere bete
Koi nahi tere saath...
As I listen to the above lines, I see his mother breathing her last in his arms. And then I see him once again as a child, his head on her lap, finding solace in the soft folds of her sari...
Blinking back tears, I double check to see if he did indeed write this number in 1998. He's only twenty-five at the time, at the prime of life. His recent songs 'Sandese Aate Hain' and 'Yeh Dil Deewana' are a runaway success. He's a household name. What prompts him then, when he has everything going for him, to write such sombre lyrics?
My question seems to reach him, for the very next day he speaks about this song in an interview given to Mumbai Mirror. He reveals he has written this song for his mother, so that he can listen to it when she's no more. He further recalls how his mother had called him up once, a few days before her demise. He's unable to answer the phone, so she leaves a voicemail. She's crying and mentions the second antara of the song - Kisi raah par mai agar nahi rahoon mere laal... Sheronwaali Ma swaroop thamungi tera haath. That's exactly how it will be after I'm gone, she assures him. Shortly afterwards, she leaves for her new abode and the words Sonu writes in '98, come true...
If I didn't know better, I'd have sworn he wrote this song after his mother passed away.
The song is one of the eight tracks in the album Sanskar. It is an album with a difference. Sonu calls it an 'experimental attempt.' At a time when Indi-pop is dominated by flashy music videos and peppy love songs, Sanskar quietly chooses devotion, introspection and stillness instead.
All the songs in the album, whether it be 'Hari Mere Ghar ko' or 'Vandana Kariye' or 'Jab Mai Bhatak Jaata Hoon,' are extremely soothing and fill one with peace and tranquility. While the lyrics of the songs melt one's heart, especially 'Soja Sapno Mein Khoja,' his voice sounds so immaculate and pure, that if you close your eyes while listening to this album for a few moments, the noise of the world seems to fade away.
The music itself remains understated, never overpowering the emotion of the words.
Sanskar gets mixed reviews when it is released. The connoisseurs of music love it. But while one critic applauds it as refreshing and removed from the cynicism and cacophony prevalent at the time, another trashes it and calls it the epitaph of Sonu's singing career. Epitaph? Isn't that too harsh and cruel a word to use for a young talent, a newcomer, trying to make his mark in a cold and indifferent industry?
More than twenty years later, not only is Sonu Nigam still going strong, but the songs of Sanskar continue to find listeners who seek peace in a noisy world.
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