A R Rahman Online Website Beta

Writing about Allah Rakha Rahman requires one to be a hound rather than a fox, a sleuth rather than an artist. And yes, it requires the patience of a saint to wait for hours at his Kodambakkam home along with directors, producers, wannabe singers and his large and ever-growing staff. The genius, when he appears, is chatty, cheery and charming enough. But he is not given to revealing too much about himself, whether it is about his faith or the way he works.

The best way to get to know him is to speak around him, which is exactly what Kamini Mathai has done. So yes A.R. Rahman: The Musical Storm may look like a quickie and even smell like a hard-headed business move rather than a long-nurtured editorial decision but it is still enlightening about one of India’s most private public figures, who began by earning Rs 50 as a record player operator and can now put any figure on desperately preferred bank cheques.

What it is rich in is a lot of trivia for Rahmaniacs. Of how he was about to go to the Berkeley School of Music before Mani Ratnam offered him Roja or how he made Subhash Ghai stay up for 58 nights in a row while working on Taal or how he once dyed his ponytail red or even how the K.M. in his K.M. Music Conservatory stands for a 16th century Sufi saint, Khalishah Mastan, who had the same name as Rahman’s mother’s guru, Kareemullah Shah Qadri.