Rahman: Man of the Year
WHAT ELSE IS THERE?
Baradwaj Rangan worms into AR Rahman’s head and wonders from within – and without.
DECEMBER, 2009 – IF MY NAME WAS ALLAH RAKHA RAHMAN, I’d be, right now, a quivering mass of jelly. Let’s see. Earlier this year, I dug deep and brought out a stunning set of compositions for Delhi-6. (And I mean, stunning. I surprise myself when I sit down to compose with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. The channel to the Almighty opens up so much more powerfully with him by my side, as it did when we collaborated earlier on Rang De Basanti.) I, then, hopped on a trans-continental surfboard and rode the Slumdog Millionaire wave – past the initial will-he-won’t-he hype, past the clamour of whinnying naysayers who chanted oh-but-he’s-done-much-better-stuff-before, past the Golden Globes, and all the way to the Oscar dais, where I picked up not one but two Academy Awards and also performed on stage. I returned to the kind of confetti-strewn fanfare accorded to emperors coming back after conquering the world. Even their chants, those deafening chants, had the definitive ring of victory: Jai Ho!
And now, I sit alone, a mile away from the madding crowd and its ego-massaging wiles, and my brow creases in concern. This is surely the crippling, Hamletish indecision that Neil Armstrong felt after setting foot on lunar waste: Is my life, as I know it, over? What else is there? What do I do for an encore? Since I lifted those two golden statuettes and smiled in front a thousand photographers for a picture that was splashed across millions of acres of newsprint (and I’m not even getting to the television mania), I’ve knuckled down for Blue (here) and Couples Retreat (over there). I gave my all to Blue, but the negative buzz surrounding the production never gave the album a real chance. All that it’s remembered for, now, is the ice-cool video of Kylie Minogue with her upturned thumbs and a pert bottom wiggling to Chiggy Wiggy. As for Couples Retreat, that’s the kind of pre-programmed date-flick where you could scrabble together an album of elevator Muzak and no one would tell the difference. To be or…
Yes. That would be me had I been AR Rahman – and I wonder, ever so often, about the eddies that swirl inside the outwardly calm-collected head of the real AR Rahman. Or is that mind, famously resigned to that highest of powers, as calm and collected as the countenance? After all, Rahman did say, “Every time I sit for music, I try to destroy my ego. At the same time, I have a sense of pride, that if I do something, it has to be good. It’s unnerving. It’s a paradox. It humbles you – and you wait for the intervention of God. You say: Give me a tune please. I need to make this work.” Does this still hold? Is that humility still a powerful corrective to the heady glories from the earlier part of this year? Or has it been eclipsed by the pride he talked about? Does he face the challenges of composing for Shankar’s Endhiran/Robot and Mani Ratnam’s Raavan the way he always did, awaiting the intervention of God, or have the Oscars instilled a newfound confidence in his own talents?
We’ll never truly know about the internal workings of that genius mind, so it’s perhaps more useful to ponder about the other variables – the externals. The unveiling of a new Rahman soundtrack is as much an event as it was in the pre-Oscar era – perhaps more so now, owing to his achievement of taking one small step for himself, one giant leap for Indian film music – but the stage has gotten a lot more crowded. In the Tamil market, Yuvan Shankar Raja (Ilayaraja’s son) and Harris Jayaraj (who worked under Rahman earlier) have gradually nibbled away large chunks of the popular-music pie. Of course, one could say that Rahman has, for a while now, gone past the “popular music” phase of his career, the Chiku Buku Rayile phase of dance-ready hits that were instantly fetching and easy to whistle along with. His music has gotten more intricate, more idiosyncratic, more geared towards pushing envelopes than pulsing through discotheques. (I mean, what can you really do with Oru koodai sunlight from Sivaji other than gape at the postmodern sound architecture?) But still.
The popularity charts, in the Hindi market, are ruled by parvenus like Pritam, who’s perfected the art (or is it merely a craft?) of creating foot-tapping music with the masses in mind. The talented trio of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, on the other hand, has insinuated itself with the more ambitious filmmakers. (With the rock-meets-Bollypop scores for Rock On and London Dreams, along with the Pink Floyd-tinged angst-o-rama for Taare Zameen Par, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have become the go-to guys for songs with a certain Western sensibility.) Even Ashutosh Gowariker, a longtime Rahman loyalist, sought out the relatively unknown Sohail Sen when he wanted insta-music for his rom-com quickie What’s Your Raashee?. Again, one could argue that Rahman exists in a stratosphere of his own (the moon, perhaps?), and that, more than ever, he can afford to work only with those who heed his need for time and space. But you can’t help scratching your head over where Blue fits into this schemata. Why ornament this undeserving action-adventure with such envelope-busters as Rehnuma when a more “popular” score would have been more appropriate?
Is this a deliberate move, conferring prestige on a product that otherwise would have none, or is this a mistake, throwing pearls before artfully dolled-up swine? When the film spread its arms and screamed out for a massy, foot-tapping score – the kind the Rahman of yore would have composed with a left hand tinkling idly on the synthesizer – why did he opt for class? Has Rahman decided he’s no longer servicing the movie in question, rather just the notion of the music album? (Is Blue, therefore, less a movie than a vehicle for his music?) Is his only concern the adoration of the genuine lover of music? Doesn’t he care about being on the lips of the rickshaw-driver anymore? Rahman confessed, a few years ago, “I think the competition is within myself. There’s so much you could do, but because of the time factor and other things, if you think of 100%, you deliver 30%.” He waved aside the very practical concern of thinking about other composers as competition, “Because I believe that my share is defined by God. And that’s what I’m getting. So even if I want to do 30 movies, I can’t because it’s not my share.” The reasoning is adept, admirable even. But does it bode well to look askance at marketplace realities?
If these musings appear a little premature, simply on the basis of Blue and Couples Retreat, they are also pertinent, if only because they loop back to our original questions: What else is there? And where does an Oscar-winner go from here? As we chew on that, let’s flash back to the Oscar night itself – the reason this story is being written, the reason Rahman is one of the Men of this Year. As expected, he won the most prestigious film award on the planet. As expected, he thanked his mother (“Mere paas maa hai,” he joked, invoking a line from Deewar that, unfortunately, very few of the glitterati in attendance understood), all his musicians from Chennai and Mumbai, and above all, God. He gladdened the hearts of millions from his home-state by speaking in Tamil (for the first time on the Oscar podium, one presumes) – “Ella pugazhum iraivanukke,” Rahman said, that all praise goes to the Almighty. And then, as icing on an already frosted cake, there was that second Oscar.
But the victory of Slumdog Millionaire was just a flash in the pan, a sweet little feel-good moment and little else – at least in the context of moviemaking in and about India. There’s Gandhi as a precedent. It won eight Oscars – and what happened? It was nearly three decades before Danny Boyle landed up with his crew and told a story set in our country. It’s Rahman’s victory that will be remembered. Slumdog Millionaire will go down in Oscar history as a kind of Rocky, a popular entertainer that was hugely loved during its time and now remembered mainly as the film that put Sylvester Stallone on the map. And the man put on the map, this time, was AR Rahman. He found a door opening for him in Hollywood, and he jammed his foot in. That’s all there was to Couples Retreat. What will this lead to? Will he seek out more challenging projects over there? And what will he do over here? But all that can wait. For the time being, let’s just savour, all over again, that goosefleshy double-win and the self-effacing grin that came with it.
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