Gopal Srinivasan discusses the special bond between A.R. Rahman and the Filmfare Awards in this column.
It’s that time of the year again, especially in Bollywood—the season of awards. Much-awaited appreciation for hard work put in during the previous year. One person who had put in a lot of effort was Ismail Darbar, and he was certainly in the running for the music awards. But unfortunately for him, he ran into A.R. Rahman.
This year, Rahman has virtually swept all of them. Starting from the newly instituted Stardust Cine Honours to the now familiar Screen Awards to the Big Daddy of them all, the Filmfare Awards. He’s picked them all up for his blockbuster music in Taal. Though not many may feel that Taal would figure among Rahman’s all-time best scores, what clicked for Taal was that the score was more in the style of Bollywood than most Rahman scores.
According to respected Bollywood trade expert Amod Mehra, Taal has one of Bollywood’s all-time highest sales. Till date, it has sold 7,500,000 cassettes and is still selling. Anyway, on the way, he also grabbed the little-known Filmgoers Award and the Dinakaran Cine Awards for Mudhalvan and Kadhalar Dhinam in Tamil cinema. And the icing on the cake was when he was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India for his contribution to the field of arts. Coming up on March 11th is the Zee Cine Awards, followed by the Bollywood International Awards in New York in May, and the MTV, Zee Sangeet Awards, and a host of other regional awards later in the year. Coming to think of it, maybe I should institute my own set of awards and give them all to Rahman, at a private ceremony of course. I can’t afford elaborate shows of grandeur, you see!
The Filmfare Awards, instituted by India’s largest-selling film magazine, Filmfare, from the Times of India group, is close to 50 years old. It’s been described as ‘India’s Oscars’ and is arguably India’s most coveted movie award. The stylish trophy was designed by a late Times of India staffer named Clare Mendonca and, in true Oscar fashion, was even called ‘The Clares’ for some time. And I am not kidding. You can call up Filmfare and ask them. Sorry, that’s out of another age. You can e-mail them and ask.
Rahman, in his relatively short career, has had a highly favourable relationship with the Filmfare Awards. In his eight years in the film industry, he has won as many as 11 Filmfare Awards. And he is now only third in the list of all-time highest Filmfare Award winners, behind Gulzar with 14 and Kamal Haasan with 18. Of the 11, he has won seven for Tamil films and four for Hindi films.
Rahman bagged his first Filmfare Award in 1993 for his debut film Roja. He went on stage looking like a school kid who had lost his way and wandered into the wrong place and received the award from former Miss India and actress Nafisa Ali. And he’s never looked back since then. From that year onwards, other composers were virtually ruled out as contenders for the Tamil Filmfare Awards. From 1993 to 1999, seven years on the trot, Rahman has retained the award. Surely that must be a record for any kind of award anywhere.
And I am almost certain he will repeat the feat this year too. Rahman also probably owes it to the fact that he has little competition from other composers down south. So much so that if he’s had even one release that year, he’s almost assured of the award next year.
His second award was in 1994, for Gentleman. And the third in 1995 when he bagged the first R.D. Burman-Filmfare Award for best upcoming musical talent for Roja, instituted in honour of the legendary R.D. Burman following his premature death in 1994. This was his first Hindi Filmfare Award. The same year, he pocketed the Tamil Filmfare Award for Kadhalan. In 1995, Rahman stormed Bollywood with a spectacular score in Rangeela and picked up his second Hindi Filmfare award and fifth overall in February 1996. Later the same year, he bagged the Tamil award for Bombay. In 1997, he was not in contention for the Hindi Awards since he had no release the previous year. Kadhal Desam won him his seventh trophy that year.
In 1998, he was virtually assured of the Tamil award for Minsara Kanavu since he had already bagged the National Award for the movie. That made it eight trophies. Daud was not even nominated at the Hindi awards. In 1999, he notched up a second double when he first picked up the Hindi award for Dil Se and later the Tamil award for Jeans, hitting double figures. While Rahman lost out to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in most of the awards that year (whether KKHH deserved it over Dil Se will require another article altogether), quite expectedly Filmfare gave him the award. This is not to suggest that Filmfare has a bias towards Rahman.
But Filmfare certainly seems to have a soft corner for Rahman! And Rahman began his journey into the second ten by picking up the Hindi award for Taal in February 2000, this being his 11th overall and fourth for Hindi.
Interestingly, Rahman has received nine of his 11 awards in person. The first one he missed was in 1997, the one for Kadhal Desam, because he was away in Canada recording for Earth. A videographed message from Rahman was played at the function where he announced the impending release of Vandemataram. This award was collected on his behalf by Shankar. The other one he missed was this year, for Taal (collected on his behalf by Amrish Puri), for reasons we don’t know yet. Some say he’s already moved to London to work on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams. We don’t know yet!
Also, Rahman’s first public performance in India was at the 1997 Hindi Filmfare Awards ceremony where he sang Mustafa Mustafa and featured tracks from Fire. So, as we see, Rahman has had an extra special relationship with the Filmfare Awards. In fact, the only brand endorsement Rahman has ever made is for Filmfare! Out of gratitude perhaps! So as we await another round of applause for Rahman, this is Gops signing off for Rahmanonline.com.
© Gopal Srinivasan
This article has been revived from Rahmanonline.com, one of the most popular fan websites created by Satish Subramanian in the early 2000s. ©The rights to this material are reserved to the owner. If you have any concerns or comments, please send an email to info@rahmaniac.com.
