> Bollywood, which has immediately claimed Rahman as its own, hasn’t always
> been kind to him.
I so completely agree with this comment. Now that ARR has proved "He is
unbeatable" Bollywood seems to be making a claim on him. But on the other hand
I am proud this genius from south has sealed the lips of many of his critics
from bollywood which no other music director down south has been able to
achieve. May god bless him to attain more and more laurels.
Cheers
Mahiya
--- On Sun, 1/18/09, Gopal Srinivasan <catchg...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Gopal Srinivasan <catchg...@yahoo.com>
Subject: [arr] Good as gold
To: arrahmanfans@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, January 18, 2009, 2:40 AM
Good as gold
Kaveree Bamzai
January 16, 2009
Comment Print Email A A A Share
Over the past decade at least two people have made an industry of their
Hollywood careers:
Shekhar Kapur who can talk anyone to sleep on this subject and Aishwarya Rai
who has turned
down more roles from Will Smith than she has acted in international movies. So
it is apt that a
little man who looks like a genial garden gnome and is as ferociously talented
as he is
unfailingly self-effacing, is enjoying the sort of global acclaim that has
eluded so many big
talkers and pushy splashers.
Allah Rakha Rahman sings his tune
Allah Rakha Rahman, a Malayalee Muslim who was born a Hindu and has been
playing professionally
since the age of 11, fulfils two of the most important criteria for success in
my book. One is
of doing whatever you do best for at least 10,000 hours in a lifetime, the
golden mean that
Malcolm Gladwell shows in his new book Outliers is the hallmark of successful
people.
The other is humility, a lesson the late Randy Pausch says he learnt quite
early on his life.
In The Last Lecture, he speaks of how he once complained to his mother about a
particularly
difficult graduate class. “We know how you feel, honey,” his mother said. “When
your father was
your age, he was fighting the Germans.”
This is not to suggest that winning a Golden Globe or perhaps an Oscar is
anywhere close to
winning a war, but there are wonderful things to learn from Rahman’s story.
Look at the
barriers he has broken: first in Bollywood which regards talent from the south
with the disdain
reserved for the underclass. And then in the rest of the world, which has gone
from using his
songs in end credits to giving him a movie of his own.
It’s not been easy. While Rahman’s Bombay Dreams did fairly well at the West
End, it faltered
on Broadway and pretty much the same fate befell the Toronto staging of the
Lord of the Rings
musical, of which he was co-composer. But he hasn’t let it affect his
enthusiasm for trying
something new.
Bollywood, which has immediately claimed Rahman as its own, hasn’t always been
kind to him. It
finds the Mozart from Madras too exacting and demanding. I remember a
particularly rueful
comment from him at an awards function in Singapore where he acknowledged an
award for Lagaan
but noted how Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham’s soundtrack seemed far more popular.
Rahman has also followed a principle that few talented individuals adhere to.
Which brings me
to the other Pausch lesson: If you want to achieve your dreams, you had better
learn to work
and play well with others. Indeed, Rahman’s newly set-up music conservatory and
his unique
ability to pick gloss from dross makes him an institution builder, not just a
professional
selfpromoter with a megaphone for a mouth.
It’s the kind of thing middle India needs to cling to right now with another
dream, built by an
apparent model of rectitude, B. Ramalinga Raju, crumbling before our very eyes.
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