On April 2006, veteran malayalam lyricist Baranikkavu shivakumar was the chief guest for a music show in one of the malayalam channels Amrita TV. Suddenly he started singing "vellithen kinnampol" from his moive (Penpada- 1975) and declared its AR Rahman's tune. Everyone got surprised. That was a new piece of information for all music lovers in kerala. Bharanikavu Sivakumar and Shekhar sir was working for that movie, and had to compose total 4 songs. They completed 3 songs and was struggling to get the tune for the 4th one. Shekhar sir went inside and by that time young dileep came back from the play ground and started playing something on harmonium. Everybody liked that tune and asked Sekhar Sir to compose a song with that tune and the rest was history. ARR was just 8 or 9 that time Later on Shivakumar sir revealed the same story to one of the leading malayalam dailies "malayala manorama". He was proudly saying that it was me not Vairamuthu who wrote the lyrics for an AR tune for the first time. Here is the video for Chithra telling abt the same story( Those who can understand malayalam) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOt3curQTyk and Finally ARR agrees " Yes, something like that happend" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGlndaySJgM
regards, bivin