Life and times of AR Rahman

The Public Service Broadcasting Trust’s (PSBT) mandate is to create documentaries that showcase and celebrate India. Umesh Aggarwal, a music lover as well as documentary filmmaker, wanted to present AR Rahman’s journey by making a film under the PSBT initiative. “Rahman is definitely one Indian that we need to celebrate. Earlier, Pandit Ravishankar and many others reached out to a global audience, but they had a niche following. Rahman is the first Indian musician to capture popular imagination worldwide. He won hearts by singing in regional Indian languages, and this made him my icon. He is also the first Indian to bag an Oscar award,” Umesh elaborated.

Did you know that A R Rahman sometimes watches movies with the sound on mute? If you are wondering why he does that, so did Umesh Aggarwal. Umesh voiced his thoughts about this revelation, saying, “That’s very interesting. I never understood why he did that. And when I asked him, he said that he reads the subtitles to understand the dialogues and then thinks of composing music or background tracks to a particular scene.” Discovering Rahman’s novel methods is just one of the reasons why Umesh will forever cherish the three-year-long experience of working with the musician and filming the documentary.

Jai Ho shows the lesser-known aspects of Rahman’s journey, his vision, and his stubbornness to break the conventional patterns in music, his life in Chennai and other home in LA, his associates, fellow musicians, family, and more. It compiles many unknown moments from his life, and shows how he rose above it all to become a global icon.

With AR Rahman known to be a very shy and reserved person, getting approval for shooting this documentary was not an easy task. It took Umesh eight months to meet Rahman and less than five minutes to convince him to do this documentary. “Jai Ho is perhaps the first definitive film on him. Initially when I took this up, I thought it would be futile, but I desperately wanted to try and pursue it. It took me three months to reach his office through a letter. We approached Rahman’s office through many people and finally the letter reached him in August 2012. I got a response saying that he would call at 2.30 am to discuss the same. But, that midnight never came. I would stay awake many nights waiting for the call, but it never came,” he narrated.

One day, Umesh took a flight to Chennai and reached his office. “I went with a certain amount of determination. I managed to meet his sister, who ensured one meeting with him.

She told me to come back after five hours. Since I was staying elsewhere and could have missed him if I left, I literally waited on the road outside his home for the whole while.

Finally, that evening I met him and he agreed. Being a true professional, by the time I reached my hotel, there was a mail in my inbox, giving his consent for the documentary, and asking his team to help me with archival footage,” he shared.  

This documentary was shot over the course of three years. Was it intimidating? “Absolutely not, as he is so humble, down-to-earth, and treated me like a professional. When we were in LA, I had difficulty getting vegetarian food, but he ensured I got my food, and arranged lunch for us there,” Umesh said, and concluded, “He is a pure soul and has no wall or boundaries in his heart.”

(The documentary will be screened on Discovery Channel on October 26 at 9 pm)