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AR Rahman may be one of the most prolific music composers in Bollywood today, but it took him seven years to feel at home while composing Hindi songs. He made his Bollywood debut with Mani Ratnam’s 1991 romantic thriller Roja, and went on to do a trilogy with him — Roja, Bombay (1995), and Dil Se.. (1998). He also made a dent with Ram Gopal Varma’s 1995 romantic comedy Rangeela, which was completely different from the Mani Ratnam films. The composer who believes it took him years to feel like an insider in Bollywood, also opened up on losing out on work in the last eight years in the Hindi film industry and also wondered about its causes.
But it wasn’t until Subhash Ghai’s 1999 romantic drama Taal that he stopped feeling like an outsider in Hindi cinema. “Actually, I was still an outsider with these three (Roja, Bombay, Dil Se..), but Taal became a household (album). It entered the kitchens of everybody, so to say. Even now, most of the North Indians still have it in their blood because it’s a little bit of Punjabi and a little bit of Hindi and a little bit of mountain music,” said Rahman.
He believes he didn’t belong to Hindi cinema till then because he “never spoke Hindi.” “It’s very difficult for a Tamil person to speak Hindi because we have such attachment. But then Subhash Ghai said, ‘I love your music, but if you want to stay longer, learn Hindi.’ I said, ‘Okay, let me go a few steps further and learn Urdu because it’s the mother of Hindi music in the 1960s and ’70s,” Rahman told BBC Asian Network.
He went on to learn Arabic since it’s very similar to Urdu in terms of pronunciation. “Then I got into Punjabi because of Sukhwinder Singh’s influence when he came into my world. The reason why I got Sukhwinder was because I was asking, ‘Do you have any singer who can sing and write in Punjabi? Then my friend Brij Bhushan suggested Sukhwinder Singh,” added Rahman.
Sukhwinder and Rahman went on to collaborate on multiple iconic songs like “Chaiyya Chaiyya” from Dil Se.., “Ramta Jogi” from Taal, and the Oscar-winning track “Jai Ho” from Danny Boyle's 2008 British film Slumdog Millionaire. Other songs from Taal, starring Aishwarya Rai, Akshaye Khanna, and Anil Kapoor also made Rahman a household name — “Taal Se Taal,” “Nahin Saamne Tu,” “Kahin Aag Lage Lag Jaye,” and “Ishq Bina.”
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When asked that it is believed that there is ‘prejudice within the Hindi film landscape’ and there is discrimination against the Tamil community in Bollywood or people who are not from Maharashtra, AR Rahman answered: “Maybe I never get to know of this, maybe it was concealed but I didn’t feel any of this. Maybe in the past eight years because a power shift has happened and people who are not creative have the power now. It might be a communal thing also… but it is not in my face. It comes to me as Chinese whispers that they booked you but the music company went ahead and hired their 5 composers. I say good, I have more time to chill with my family. I am not in search for work. I don’t want to go in search for work. I want work to come to me; my sincerity to earn work. Whatever I deserve, I get.”
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Last year, Rahman revealed another reason why he began doing more Hindi films, as opposed to only films dubbed in multiple languages like the Mani Ratnam trilogy. “When my movies like Dil Se and Roja did well, people started making literal translations of Tamil songs. It was humiliating for me to see bad comments like, ‘This Hindi lyrics sucks, I would rather listen to the Tamil version,’” he told NDTV, adding, “That’s when I started focusing on doing more Hindi-oriented movies instead of dubbed ones.”
