The book was written when both the authors were changing jobs, and they wanted to use the time to go back to memories of the late 1960s through to the late 1980s. The working title of the book was The Pancham Caravan. The first three chapters were written and submitted to Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Managing Editor, HarperCollins India in January 2009, who gave the go-ahead in 30 minutes. The contract was signed at Delhi Hat, on February 14, 2009.
Writing this book entailed multiple tasks, the most important one of which was meeting the musicians with whom R D Burman had worked. The first person to be interviewed for the book was ace guitarist Ramesh Iyer. The manuscript was completed in October 2010.
The book had multi-city launches, with the first one at The Oxford Book Shop, Mumbai, on April 26, 2011.[3][4][5] Subsequent launches happened at Crossword, Kolkata, at India Habitat Center, New Delhi. Launches were also held at Jaipur and at Chennai.[6]
