The article which appears below was originally published in Krishna Tiloks's book, Notes Of A Dream. ©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.
In the midst of Kareema Begum’s spiritual attempts to work a miracle and her husband’s (increasingly futile) hospital treatments, the family was rapidly heading towards financial disaster. However, that didn’t stop Kareema Begum from doing whatever she could to help Shekhar. What person would leave any stone unturned to save a loved one? Shekhar’s wife was not willing to give up. She was tireless, relentless, in her efforts.
AR, like all his family members, was born a Hindu. And there was pretty much no popular god in the Hindu pantheon that Shekhar’s family did not pray to in a bid to improve his failing health. However, the attempts did little to help their cause.
As Shekhar’s health seemed to be truly reaching crisis point, his whole family, his wife especially, began to develop an interest in Sufi Islam. And it came to the fore more and more as Shekhar ailed on inexplicably and irretrievably. Rahman’s mother visited many dargahs in the hope of curing her husband.
‘It was during that time that we first met Karimullah Shah Qadri, a Sufi pir, who became a great influence on the family,’ AR says. ‘He helped us come to terms with many things. He was a huge support.’ AR also believes they reached the Islamic healers for help ‘too late’.
The family would eventually convert to Islam entirely and let go of their former identities. All memories of who they were, understandably, would be adjudged as detrimental to their happiness and continued progress. It was a price they were willing to pay. And, given the circumstances they faced, they can’t be faulted for doing so. Fact is, when one is looking for peace, sentiment has to be put on the backburner sometimes. It is better that it’s put on the backburner sometimes. This has little to do with anything religious, really. Simply, when you’ve been through some of the worst times of your life, you just want to start afresh at some point. To do away with everything that reminds you of that old life, the hard times.
‘I think he associated his past with his older religion and his new one gave him hope and clarity,’ says Rajiv Menon. ‘It was a new beginning for him and I think a lot of artists crave that. Once your belief changes, you look at God and your craft differently. I think Islam helped him and helped his music.’
AR and his family did not convert from Hinduism to Islam until long after Shekhar’s death. Only towards the end of the 1980s, shortly before the advent of Roja, did AR and his mother and sisters turn to Islam as a source of hope, faith and guidance. Their relating to the religion, however, began with Shekhar’s death and the hard days leading up to it. A persisting rumour is that the family finally converted after one of the sisters fell ill in the late 1980s, but AR has publicly denied that.
‘He’s very at home in Islam,’ says Raihanah. ‘We all got signs from God, I think. It was a calling, really. It wasn’t so much a conversion as an embracing when we finally did it. Conversion is the wrong word. From the time of Dad’s death to Roja it was a period of transformation for Rahman. It was a ten-year process and when it finally happened, it was a very easy shift for him.’
With regard to Shekhar’s illness though, the ultimate cruelty, perhaps, was the very last one. Shekhar seemed to be recovering at one point. His appetite returned. He appeared to be getting stronger. He was sent home from the hospital as it was deemed that he no longer needed constant and intensive care. That he would, in fact, be better soon. His family’s hopes were raised. His wife felt her efforts, all the treatments and prayers, were finally paying off.
But a week later Shekhar was gone.
AR has since confessed on multiple occasions that having to light his father’s funeral pyre is a memory that will haunt him forever. The death and terrible illness of Shekhar shaped Rahman in an intrinsic manner. The loss of his father, the difficult and confusing years preceding Shekhar’s passing and the hard days that would come immediately after—all of it sculpted AR’s deepest level of being in an irrevocable way. Whether for better or for worse, none can truly say. Rahman himself believes that it all happened for a reason. ‘Sometimes we eventually understand it and sometimes we don’t,’ he says. ‘But bad things only happen for the right reasons.’
Rajiv Menon says, ‘I lost my father when I was very young as well. It was a struggle, but that was what made me who I am today. Did I wish my father hadn’t died? Of course. But sometimes, things like this just have to happen—to make you who you’re meant to be.’ He adds, ‘But I never sensed anger in Rahman about what happened to him.’
But surely AR does feel the soulful ache that is known only to those who have seen too much loss, too soon. This sadness permeates all of Rahman’s music, his voice, his mannerisms and it comes from deep within. All artists are aware of a certain measure of emptiness at their core and AR is no different. A quote on his website, in fact, states that in an artist’s ‘personal life there should be, at least in some corner of his heart, a tinge of lingering sorrow.’ As he himself puts it: ‘It is melancholy that brings melody into your life.’
‘Losing our father wasn’t easy,’ Raihanah says, ‘but we had quite a few people around us, supporting us. We had our mother. Our neighbours were nice to us too; they were like family almost. And until I was eighteen, our grandparents were still with us. Between all of that we didn’t feel the loss of our father too badly. It could easily have been much worse. And Rahman eventually sort of became a father figure. I actually miss Dad much more now than I did then.’
Many years later, AR’s three children—his daughters Khatija and Raheema and his son Ameen—would tell their world-famous father he was always travelling and spent too little time with them. All three kids adore him and they are their father’s world. Though he never talks about it much, it is surely tough for AR to come to terms with the fact that his personal life takes a beating owing to his schedule and stardom. But he never lets himself or his children wallow in the comfort of complaining about the circumstances.
‘Be happy you have a dad at all, I always tell them,’ he says. ‘You have a dad who goes away, but always comes back. My dad went away and he never came back.’
One thing was for certain, though: after Shekhar’s death, nothing would ever be the same for AR. He had to be the man of the household from then on and that meant he had to generate an income—and fast—if he, his mother and three sisters were to survive.
