Chapter 12: The Waiting Train/ Notes Of A Dream by Krishna Trilok
In nearly 1991, a gentleman named Raviprakash was working with Rajiv Menon and an ad agency called HTA (WT today) on a commercial. Raviprakash is best known as an actor who has played prominent roles in films such as Mani Ratnam’s Alaipayuthey and Shankar’s Boys. But in the early 1990s he was the CEO of a TV-manufacturing company called Solidaire. The aforementioned commercial was for one of the company’s portable TVs. And the jingle for it was composed by the young AR.
When we were recording the jingle,’ says Raviprakash, ‘the first few times I heard it, I felt like something was missing. But Rahman would just keep smiling and winking at me and adding layers of music until it sounded perfect. He was just God-gifted.’ In any case, after the jingle was recorded, and the executives from HTA had left the studio, AR went to Raviprakash and said softly, ‘Hey, there’s something I want you to listen to. ‘Sure,’ Ravi said. AR then played him a track. I was bowled over when I heard it,’ Raviprakash recalls. He asked AR if it was a jingle for somebody else.
AR didn’t offer any explanation and just said, ‘Now listen to this. He played me another number and that was fantastic as well, says Ravi. I told him, “Wow, man, you’ve gone into another league,” and asked him what this music was. Only then did AR tell him, They’re songs for a film I’m doing. Mani Ratnam’s directing it and he’s asked me to do the music.
Roja has withstood the test of time in the way very few works of art have. The film is built around the premise of political unrest in Kashmir.
It is the tale of a young Tamil couple who go to Kashmir when the husband, Rishi (portrayed by Arvind Swamy), a cryptologist, is sent to the region on a military assignment. Rishi is kidnapped by terrorists, and his newly-wed wife, Roja (Madhoobala Raghunath), needs to find a way to get him back in a land where she does not know anyone and she can speak neither Hindi nor Kashmiri.
The movie draws subtly from the most loved stories of Indian mythology (like the Ramayana, and the tale of the lovers Savitri and Satyavan) as well as on Indian patriotic feeling. The result was a heart-wrenching and uplifting tale of love, feminine strength and human goodness that is as touching and relevant now as it was when it was released back in 1992. The themes of the film are both universal and timeless.
Roja-apart from being the name of the female protagonist–is Tamil for ‘rose’. Mani Ratnam felt that the red flower with its thorns was a suitable metaphor for Kashmir, a land that is at once dangerous and beautiful.
Kashmir itself, at the time, was too unsafe for the cast and crew to film in, and so Roja was primarily shot in other mountainous regions of India, most of them in the southern parts of the country. Visually too the film was a masterpiece, with some stunning cinematography by cinematographer Santosh Sivan.
But the thing people remember most about and immediately associate with Roja is its music and, more specifically, the man who made that music.
A.R. Rahman was genuinely not interested in composing for films before the fact. Playing at recording sessions for other composers, programming for them and creating jingles was plenty lucrative. And his bands and other independent collaborations allowed him to experiment creatively with music. He was happy with what he had. Towards the end of the 1980s, in fact, AR had stopped playing at recording sessions altogether to focus exclusively on making jingles.
But AR’s sister Raihanah believes that he would have eventually got into composing for films. The movies wouldn’t have let his sort of talent go,’ she says. I’m just thankful it was a director of Mani Ratnam’s standard who got to him first. Roja was a great film and it gave Rahman the platform he deserved. He could easily have ended up composing for some other film-maker for his first movie, not been noticed at all, and been just another music director.’
AR wanted to compose for Roja because he was a Mani Ratnam fan and because he knew that the director respected good music, different music. Considering all that it would become, the film was made on a modest budget. No one expected a Tamil film, with virtually unknown actors, about the problems in faraway Kashmir would work as it did.
When it came to creating the Roja album, creatively, AR did not have anything to complain about. Mani Ratnam was very clear about what he wanted and pushed his new composer relentlessly, but he was also open to ideas and allowed AR his freedom.
The Roja album itself was compact, with seven songs (five, strictly speaking; two songs were reprises), but each was a sonic novelty. The likes of them were unheard by the Tamil ear when they first came out, And they demonstrated Rahman’s temarkable versatility, musical knowledge and sheer talent.
‘Rukkumani Rukkumani’ was a classily erotic wedding song with a persistent beat and a powerful vocal delivery by SPB and K.S. Chitra. Both of them are among India’s most skilled and experienced singers.
Funnily, while AR is extremely strait-laced when it comes to matters of sex in real life, many of his love songs are of a playfully and joyously erotic nature though that could probably be attributed more to the lyricists he works with than the man himself. Rahman respects and embraces the joyous nature of true, respectful physical love as totally natural and powerful. It is vulgarity that he doesn’t care for.
‘Kadhal Rojave’ as a pining and haunting ballad of separated lovers (again sung by SPB, with Sujatha Mohan). ‘Pudhu Vellai Mazhai’, which was sung by Unni Menon and Sujatha Mohan, was a searing and intense number that perfectly captured Rojas wonder at seing snow for the first time.
The recording of “Kadhal Rojave” was the first time I worked with him as a composer, says SPB. ‘Panchathan was still very minimal at the time.’ SPB asked AR to sing the song and show him, but AR was very, very shy and it took a bit of prodding on SPB’s part to finally get him to do it. He sang the song, with all the nuances. It would, of course, be a while yet before AR started singing on his own records.
“Rahman never dictates,’ says SPB of the experience of recording a song for AR. ‘He asks. He is not rigid. He jokes, he is approachable and he is genuine. He has no airs. And it’s true humility. You always come out with a smile after meeting him. It’s a combination of personality and talent that makes him great. He’s a very, very good human being.’
Rojas Tamizha’, meanwhile, was an anthem of Tamil pride that AR and Bharat Bala had worked on much earlier but didn’t end up using. And it found a place of honour in the film. It was particularly memorable because it was used in one of the best-loved moments of the movie. When the extremist militants who’ve kidnapped Rishi attempt to burn the Indian flag in his presence to demonstrate their aggression and hatred, Rishi jumps on the flag and tries to smother the flames, in a symbol of defiance.
But the album’s and to an extent, the film’s-highlight was without doubt a perky and touchingly innocent reggae-based song about the dreams of a young girl. It was called ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai, a playful number sung by a relatively unknown singer by the name of Minmini.
Some of the ‘little wishes’ of the girl in the song include a desire to touch the moon, to be the centre of the universe for just a little while and to turn into a jasmine flower. When you consider the song in the context of the movie, it will move you all the more for it is essentially about the charming naivety of a young woman who will soon have to leave her idyllic home town and face unimaginable difficulties in a distant land.
The concept of ‘charts’ didn’t really exist for Indian music at the time of Roja’s release, but if it had, it’s pretty obvious that ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ would have topped them all. When the song came out, it went through the stratosphere. It was playing everywhere; people were singing along to it everywhere. It might just be one of the most played songs in Tamil movie history. And it wasn’t just in Chennai.
Roja-both as an album and as a movie went national. The north of India rarely watched films from the south then, for their aesthetics and languages and sensibilities were very different, but Roja transcended those barriers seamlessly. You can tell that AR really put himself into these songs, that he felt just what the characters in the film were feeling-the same wonder, the same mischief, the same pain.
The one thing that makes Mani Ratnam and A.R. Rahman such masters of their respective crafts is perhaps their ability to empathize with the characters in their movies. Mani Ratnam knows precisely how his characters are feeling, how they should behave. Even his actors (some of whom are the best in the business) don’t see their parts so well.
And AR knows just what the people in the movies he’s scoring for are going through. He can feel their sorrow, their happiness, their churning. Or even if he can’t feel it, he sure can imagine it. That’s part of what makes his movie music so powerful-there’s real feel in it. He invests a part of himself in all of his songs. That is why the better the director understands and communicates his script, the better the quality of music AR delivers.
Given all that it became, you’d have thought the making of Roja was a dream, but, in truth, it was sort of a trial for AR, fraught with doubts and frustrations. The man encountered his fair share of hurdles when it came to actually recording the Roja album.
Many of the musicians who had been staples at AR’s recordings till then disappeared at this time, leaving AR alone and rather dispirited. ‘My core group of musicians whom I’d been working with until then didn’t show up when the time came for me to record the songs for Roja,’ says AR. They all had other commitments, bigger gigs, and they felt that those should prioritized. So no one turned up for me.’
AR’s mother, Kareema Begum, however, told him to get over himself. A tough cookie, a woman who never wasted time feeling sorry for herself, and doesn’t indulge others who are doing so, she said to her son, ‘Listen, you need no one. You can do this on your own. Forget about them and do what you have to do. I got you all these instruments, didn’t I? You can play them, can’t you? You have everything you need. So go ahead and do this.’
AR pulled himself together, did whatever he could himself and got a few other musicians he could pull together on board and finally recorded the song.
That song was ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’. It was the first song that was recorded for Roja. Kareema Begum broke into tears when she first heard the song, the whole Roja album. She was so happy and so proud. I knew that “Chinna Chinna Aasai” was going to be a super-duper hit for sure,’ says Raihanah. ‘I was jumping around and dancing all over the house when I heard it.’
The day AR played the Roja soundtrack to Trilok Nair, his old friend was lost for words for a long time. ‘He called Sharada and me over after he’d recorded it,’ remembers Trilok. ‘I think we were the first people to listen to that song. My hair was standing by the end of it and I literally had tears in my eyes.’
Eventually, Trilok turned towards the young Rahman and said, Mark my words, you’re not going to do another jingle for me after this. I’m guaranteeing you that. This is the end of the road for you as far as advertising goes.’
What are you saying, man?’ AR laughed. What nonsense. Of course we’re going to work together again.’ No, trust me, Trilok said. I can give it to you in writing. This is it. It ends here.’ While the prediction was not one hundred percent accurate, it was pretty nearly there. After Roja, Rahman would only do a handful of jingles. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. He just didn’t have the time anymore.
‘He got on to the train that was waiting for him and he went,’ says Trilok. That was it. We all stood on the platform and waved goodbye, and he went. And I’m glad, because he deserved to be on that train.
The first song of Roja what Mani Ratnam himself heard was Chinna Chinna Aasai. I was stunned,’ the director remembers. There are rumours that “Tamizha Tamizha” was the first song of the film because he had composed it with Bharat Bala before Roja as an anthem of sorts, a Tamil empowerment song. But that isn’t true. He had composed it before, yes, but we decided to use it for Roja much later, after we’d finalized most of the other songs. And even then, it wasn’t anything like the original “Tamizha Tamizha” he’d created. It was changed quite a bit to suit the context of the film.’
It is part of the AR legend, of course, that directors have to wait to receive their music from him. Yes, they do, usually-and the waiting period can vary from hours to months. But this isn’t something that happened because Rahman got busier over the years (he was always busy), became more arrogant (he hasn’t) or just started running out of ideas (he has far from run out of ideas).
This was the case right from day one. The first schedule of the shooting of Roja was in a village in Kerala near a large waterfall by a village called Chalakudy. It is a staple shooting location for Mani Ratnam; he has short portions of several of his films there including 2010’s Raavan/ Raavanan and 2004’s Kannathil Muthamittal.
The first schedule of Roja included the scenes of Rishi and Roja meeting for the first time as well as a couple of songs, including “Chinna Chinna Aasai’ and ‘Rukkumani Rukkumani’.
The small glitch was that Rukkumani Rukkumani’ was not yet ready. ‘Rahman didn’t have it completed during that schedule,’ Mani remembers, smiling about it all these years later. We had to shoot it later, during another schedule. I called him up and asked him “Man, where is the song?” and he just said, “You’re not here. You’ve gone off to shoot. How can I finalize the song and send it to you if you’re not here to listen to it and okay it?”
Rahman is ever the perfectionist. If there is one core value that he subscribes to when it comes to his work, it is that. He doesn’t care how long it takes to get it right and he’s totally unaffected by the pressure on him to deliver. It isn’t disregard, but if he feels it’s going to take a while to make his music the best it can possibly be, he has absolutely no ralms about making you wait till he gets it there. And he doesn’t see why you should have a problem waiting either.
The process of creating and refining each piece of music can get drawn out over a (sometimes inordinately) long period of time. Consider the story of ‘Jaage Hain’, the song that would become the backbone of Mani Ratnam’s 2007 Hindi drama Guru. Rahman spent a whole night working on just the first two notes of the chorus. He sat at his keyboard and played them again and again and again until he was happy with it–until he believed it was perfect.
‘Yes, he takes a long time,’ says S.P. Balasubrahmanyam. But why not, is my question, if the result is extremely good. The delay is not because he’s lazy, but because he is overworking himself on his song.’ Consider, for instance, the case of the soundtrack album of Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar in 2011. It took AR quite a while to prepare the movie’s music, but when you listen to the end product you’ll know why. The film boasted a magnificent score and several stellar songs packed into what is, arguably, Rahman’s finest soundtrack. And Imtiaz Ali would go on to collaborate with AR on his next two projects, Highway and Tamasha. (The title of AR’s best album ever, taking into consideration a number of reliable inputs, is a close competition between Bombay, Rockstar and Dil Se.)
‘AR knows what he wants and he doesn’t stop until he gets it,’ says Mani Ratnam. ‘He’s very focused. There could be a line of people waiting outside his studio, some of them with small problems, some of them with serious issues, but he’s not going to get distracted by that. If he feels his music is not up to scratch, he’s not going to let it go until he’s satisfied with it.’
“Sometimes it takes a while, sometimes it’s quick,’ says Imtiaz Ali. If there’s a lack of clarity in my brief it takes longer. Rahman sir never settles, you see. Until the music is good, he will just not give it to you. If he is not satisfied with it, he will not give it to you. And it’s hell or high water, sometimes. He knows when the song is not ready.’ Imtiaz also adds, ‘He would have developed twenty-five tunes before he gives you the one he feels is right. But he never tells you that.’
He takes time because he’s made twenty-five different tunes all of which he is not satisfied with. And he gives you the one tune he thinks is good, without letting you know how much he’s worked on it. So you feel he’s taken a long time.’
When it comes to the work front, one of the people who know AR best is Jerry Silvester Vincent, one of Rahman’s programmers and an orchestrator. Jerry was formerly a student of AR’s KM Conservatory, but is now also a composer in his own right. He is part of KM’s Qutub-E-Kripa, an ensemble of young musicians within the school that composes for the movies. Jerry and several other members were shortlisted for a nomination at the 2018 Academy Awards, in the Best Original Song category, for their work on Raj Thiruselvan’s family drama Lake of Fire. Three songs–Have You Ever Wondered’, TIl Be Gone and We’ll Party All Night’-were on the list.
Jerry has some pretty fascinating insights to share about Rahman’s working style. ‘It’s interesting how he always meets the directors’ expectations, he says. ‘He always gives them more than they expect. Not just in terms of music. Directors almost always go away feeling like they’ve got something more when they leave him. Imtiaz Ali, for example; he and Sir talk about spirituality, life, philosophy a lot. Spending time with Sir is very rejuvenating. He has that ability. He’s really a director’s composer.’
‘I will not consider myself spiritual, but I consider Rahman sir spiritual, says Imtiaz Ali. We just sit and talk about all kinds of things:’ He adds with a laugh, ‘Sometimes very immature things even!’
AR will start focusing more and more on a film’s music the closer it gets to the release date of the soundtrack and the movie. When he starts, he’ll compose a little bit of the song and then come back after a while to look at it afresh and see how it’s sounding. He’ll correct the mistakes, improve it. Look at it objectively. He’ll keep working on it, then leaving it in between to work on something else, and revisiting it.
The last twenty days before the release though, he’ll sleep maybe one hour every day because he’ll be poring over it. The last two weeks before a release are crazy, generally, says Jerry.
There’s a lot of work we do then because Sir tends to work more intensely on things closer to the deadlines. Work on [Anand L. Rai’s] Raanjhanaa in 2013 went pretty smoothly, but [Vikram Kumar’s] 24 in 2016, for example, was a nightmare. Getting songs ready for a film is only 50 per cent of a composer’s job. After the film and its songs are shot, there is the process of rerecording for it.
Not only can creating the background score for a movie take its own time especially when a director says he wants only AR to score for a particular scene, pushes for more and better-there is also the issue of Rahman himself deciding that a song will have to be reworked so as to suit the way a film-maker has shot or used it in his film. This is why, on occasion, the version of the song you see in the movie, ultimately, is different from what you heard on the soundtrack album.
‘He understands each director’s needs very well; says Jerry, but he’ll also take his own calls sometimes and do his own thing. [Ashutosh Gowariker’s 2016 historical epic] Mohenjo Daro, for example, had only three songs originally and he suddenly decided to make it nine. Sometimes the directors reject Sir’s ideas, but sometimes they like them and they’ll fit them into the movie.’
When he is working on a song, AR will obsess over every single note and second of the piece. He’ll slave over the intro, how the song finally goes out. There is no detail that is deemed too small. And he does it even though he knows full well that some radio station playing the track is all too likely to cut out the first and last few seconds. But that doesn’t matter to him one whit. It doesn’t matter to him if no one else even realizes the kind of work he’s put into a number. What matters is that he knows that every bit of his song is perfect.
AR’s view on the matter is simple: You have to do the very best you can in everything you do. You can’t become careless at one point and think it doesn’t matter if you do half-hearted work or that no one will catch you for it. They may not, but that’s not the point. You know you didn’t do your best there. And that carelessness will seep into everything you do if you aren’t mindful of it’
The songs for Roja were released as an album in 1992. It became clear within hours of the publication that this was something else. Within days, the songs from the film-‘Chinna Chinna Aasal in particular–were playing everywhere. They were playing on the radio, from loudspeakers on the road and from little transistors in tea shops.
The music was just so fresh. AR had been worried before the release of the album about the appeal of his music. His sound was very different from anything Indian audiences had heard before, a radical departure from the kind of music that was prevalent and loved. He wasn’t at all sure if people were going to take to his work.
Fifteen days before Roja released, he didn’t sleep at all; remembers Raihanah. He had these dark shadows under his eyes. But he didn’t care. He just wanted his music to be the best it could be.’ It was a huge shift,’ Mani Ratnam says. ‘It was a huge move away from the music of the time. There were composers other than Ilayaraja who cropped up through the 1980s and in the early 1990s, but they were all emulating Raja-whether they cared to admit it or not. They might do one good album or two good albums, but they were clearly influenced by Raja.’
Rahman was different though. He was very clear in his head that he didn’t want to go down Raja’s route. Not because he thought it was bad, but because he wanted his own sound. He grew up with influences from the West. He grew up listening to what the artists in the UK and the US were putting out. His sound was born from these. It was a very Western pop sound with classical Indian influences-both Carnatic and Hindustani.
Nothing like that had been heard before,’ says Mani Ratnam. Not anywhere in this country. And it worked not only in southern India, but in the north as well. Everyone could take to AR’s music.’ Then came the film itself. Roja was released on 15 August 1992-the day that marked India’s forty-fifth year of independence from British rule. Fitting, one might suppose. As it turned out, the day would mark the birth of a new Indian commercial musical culture that would reverberate throughout the length and breadth of the entire country.
