The interview which appears below, was originally published on DNA India in January 2009. ©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.
Isaac Thomas Kottukappally has many claims to fame. Actor, director, scriptwriter, photographer, ad man, music director — he has been all this and more in Malayalam cinema, winning much praise and many national awards. He is invariably the first choice of most alternative Indian filmmakers, be it Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Girish Kasaravalli, Shaji N Karun, Mira Nair or Sasi Kumar for his exceptional talent in music. And he is also the man who first believed in the phenomenon that is AR Rahman.
Those were days when Allah Rakha Rahman was AS Dulip Kumar and used to work with famous names in music, Illaiyaraja and Johnson, mostly helping with background scores.
As a filmmaker, Kottukappally used to frequent Prasad Studio in Chennai. “The chief sound engineer played some tapes for me and the sound was simply fantastic. I wanted to know who made them, and that was Dulip, now Rahman.” It was 1987.
Kottukappally was then making an ad film and was looking for fresh music. He went to the studio, got Dulip’s address and went to his house the next day. “We spoke for a couple of hours and he made me listen to some experimental music he had made. I just told him: ‘You have to make music for my ad’. Rahman was not very confident though.”
Kottukappally was writing, directing and producing that ad, and insisted that Rahman compose the music. He took Rahman to Vijay Garden Studio and screened the film for him. “He was scared that the music union might have issues with him playing solo in place of all the musicians. So we recorded well past ten at night, with Rahman making music using a single synthesiser. Flautist Naveen, a close friend, was the only other music man.”
The ad was for Bhavan’s Photo Studio, Ernakulam. The 60-second ad jingle was on every Malayali’s lips for a long time.
“I then told many of my filmmaker colleagues ‘This boy is going to be bigger than Illaiyaraja in five years’,” he said.
In 1991, Kottukappally was making a serial for Doordarshan, Bible Ki Kahaniyan. “I wanted Rahman to do the score. But others were sceptical. I had already done around 30 ad films with him and I swore: ‘Watch out! In 12 years and he will walk in with an Oscar’.”
They went on to work together on many projects. While Mani Ratnam’s Roja was being made, Rahman was simultaneously working on Kottukappally’s video in English. “We used to record at the same studio and I heard Chinna Chinna Aasai while it was being created. Roja was released the following year and AR Rahman had arrived,” he says.
Kottukappally has always felt attached to Rahman as he “looks quite like my younger brother”. “We were walking out of the studio one day and Rahman suddenly grabbed my hand. I could see that he looked unusually disturbed. ‘It is not easy, Isaac cheta. Everyone expects each song to be a hit and that just can’t be,’ he told me. I told him not to worry, all will be well. And it was.”
The legend that Rahman has become never surprised Kottukappally. He was among the first to see it coming.
A glad Kottukappally continues to say: “This is just the beginning. Oscars and more await Rahman.”
