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.
For Rahman, his bands were something he did on the side when he was young. Making music with them was the closest thing he ever had to a recreational activity and jamming with his bandmates was the closest thing he had to ‘chilling’.
‘In my free time,’ he says, ‘I would compose music and put it aside even if I wasn’t paid. It was just for the joy of it. This work became the basis of my new music.’
So would he have then, in another timeline wherein he did not become, well, A.R. Rahman, attempted to cut an album of his own, with or without one of his bands? It was certainly an idea. AR himself has said on several occasions that he did not ever intend to get into composing for films and that sessions-playing was just a means—and not a particularly enjoyable one at that—to survive. Movies were not his main interest.
‘I didn’t like the Indian movies produced in the eighties,’ AR says. ‘My sensibilities were different.’
His ultimate dream was to make his own music, create his own albums, just like the artists of the West. Of course he would not quite get around to doing that the way he planned. A point worthy of note here is that, be it the recording sessions he was playing at or the bands he was a part of, AR was usually the youngest person in the room.
‘Those guys were all older than me,’ he says of his bandmates. ‘They would all be talking about stuff like . . . stuff older kids would talk about. They would drink and discuss stuff. And I’d just zone out and mind my own business, practising on my keyboard or tuning an instrument or something.’
That wasn’t the case only when he was with his bandmates, but also during recording sessions in the studios of Kodambakkam. Everyone who worked with him remembers that the young AR used to really keep to himself. He seemed to have no interests outside of his music and his gadgets.
‘He was a very timid person,’ remembers S.P. Balasubrahmanyam (popularly called SPB), one of the biggest South Indian singers of modern times. ‘He was like a yogi almost.’
People from other places in India call Chennai the dullest big city of the country, though it is anything but. Drugs were always big there. And for residents who were in the show business, their profession, as far as they were concerned, was a licence to indulge in every form of excess—narcotics, liquor, girls, everything.
But AR always steered clear of it all. Either he was not interested or, because of his age at the time he was exposed to it, he was plain scared of what he saw. He was oddly detached from all the ‘wild stuff’ that most young men would find fascinating. Of course, he still keeps away from it. Most people put his restraint down to his faith, and his faith definitely plays a major role in it, but it is also the discipline he had to develop in himself while growing up.
‘It’s tough to live like him,’ says Raihanah. ‘To be in this business and be so disciplined.’
AR doesn’t drink or indulge in any other form of substance-induced recreation and it is easy to put his restraint down to his religion, but one gets the sense that AR would have kept this discipline and stayed away from hedonism no matter what faith he chose to follow.
‘I think luck can only take you so far,’ AR says. ‘You can get lucky once. After that, it’s about having the right mindset and keeping the lifestyle to sustain it. It is silly that people have this idea that if you’re a musician you have to indulge in all kinds of things. That’s so judgemental. It’s not necessary at all. Sure, everyone needs an escape. But drugs and alcohol are just temporary escapes. So why go down that route? You might as well look for something more permanent. For me, spirituality is that permanent escape.’
He doesn’t judge anyone who feels otherwise though. According to those closest to him, AR is one of the least judgemental people you could come across. He lets the people in his life do as they please so long as it doesn’t infringe on his beliefs and work and they’re not trying to impose their beliefs on him.
Rajiv Menon remembers when he was with AR in London, creating music for Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), and they decided to go out to get some food. It was four in the morning and AR, of course, needed food that was halal. So he and Rajiv Menon went looking for restaurants that served halal food and finally found one. They ordered some chicken for the two of them, and Rajiv Menon asked the owner of the restaurant for a beer.
The owner looked at him and said, ‘You guys ask me for halal food and then you want beer?’
Rajiv Menon pointed to AR and said, ‘He wants halal food. I want beer.’
‘He didn’t ever tell me not to though,’ says Rajiv Menon. ‘He never told me not to do anything. He just isn’t that kind of person. He gets that these things are personal choices.’
