Some stories refuse to gr­ow old. It was in 1899 that Mirza Hadi Ruswa first wrote the book, Umrao Jaan Ada. Then, 82 years later, Muzzafar Ali adapted it for a film that's as timeless as the beauty of its lead actor Rekha. JP Dutta did the same later in 2006 with Aishwarya Rai. And there is now a musical on the classic story that will be staged in Mumbai this weekend, 120 years after it was first conceived.

Bollywood composer Salim Merchant has produced it along with his brother, Suleiman. The soundtrack of the 1981 film, Merchant tells us, means a lot to him since it's how he was introduced to the world of Bollywood music when he was a kid. "I was eight years old when my father would play the album a lot at home. I had just started learning western classical music on the piano back then. And this album, in many ways, was my first brush with Indian classical music because the songs have shades of ghazals, kh­­­ayals and thumris. So, I got really attached to it and about a year and a half ago, when we decided to produce a Broadway-style musical with live songs, I thought, 'Why don't we just redo Umrao Jaan?'" he says.