This was singer Mahalakshmi Iyer's first major Hindi film song. She had debuted the previous year for the unreleased film "Dus" (1997).[1]
After recording Udit Narayan's lines in this song, A.R. Rahman asked Gulzar for the lyrics of the chorus which was to be sung by a female singer. He specifically asked Gulzar for words with the sound "pa". It was based on this brief that Gulzar came up with the line "paakhi paakhi pardesi".[MR29]