A R Rahman and his unfulfilled dream

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: There is a rather unknown thing about the one-and-only Alla Rakha Rahman, the great music director, who has accomplished many many things in his 17-year career thus far: his unfulfilled dream.
My idol was in Hyderabad today and during an interaction I asked him about his unfulfilled dream.
“I am great fan of ace director K Viswanath and wanted to work with him. Since he has stopped making films my dream could not come true,” Rahman revealed.
Viswanath is known for making classics like Sankarabharanam, Sagar Sangamam, Swatimutyam (Easwar in Hindi) and Swarnakamalam that glorified the Indian art forms and traditions.
Sankarabharanam, the story of a classical musician, won many national awards for the music score composed by the legendary K V Mahadevan.
Rahman – who produced music of all varieties from the local to the international level – wanted to compose music on the lines of Sankarabharanam and requested Viswanath to make yet another film on Indian classical music.
Rahman also approached the great lyric-writer Veturi Sundararama Murthy to pen the lyrics. Veturi wrote the songs for Sankarabharanam, which will remain forever in the memory of all Telugu film-goers and music aficionados.
Rahman wanted to recreate that magic using the Viswanath-Veturi combination and blending it with his immense talent.
Viswanath, however, turned down the proposal saying there were no takers for his kind of films anymore.
Veturi himself told me about this a few years ago during an informal discussion on film music, Rahman, Maniratnam, Viswanath and related things.
“That was eight years ago and the project never materialized. Since then I have moved to other things,” Rahman told reporters here today.
Would he still like to do a classical music score? “Hopefully so,” the maestro replied.
Being a composer, singer and performer, which role was he comfortable in, Rahman was asked. “It’s the uncomfortableness in you that helps do things better. The more discomforted you are, the more you push yourself,” he replied.
The Oscar-winner has just completed music production for a romantic comedy Couple’s Retreat in Hollywood and is working on Vinnaithandi Varuvaya in Tamil, Puli (Pavan Kalyan) and another untitled film (starring Naga Chaitanya) in Telugu.
Rahman will be performing live, for the second time in Hyderabad, on October 24. It was in February 2002 that he gave a live performance at the GMC Balayogi Stadium at Gachibowli and I came from Vijayawada especially for the show. It was a great evening and the most memorable one in my life.
This time, however, I will unfortunately be missing the legend’s show.